Fun, creativity, imagination and simply pure entertainment - that is what the LEGO brand is all about (or at least what it used to be about before the days of regimented instruction manuals). And that is what is conveyed in this – what I consider –brilliant advert from the 1970’s that I saw rerun on television last night. Curiously, it was aired at around 1:30am on sky sports news, so surely somebody is responsible for a balls up with the media planning? Although… Sky are probably giving away ad slots at that time, making that question a moot one. Anyway, I find this ad sells LEGO in a charming and humorous way and is a testament to past advertising eras if nothing else. Using a simple story based on an insight that perfectly captures the essence of the LEGO brand, it demonstrates the product’s versatility from the offset, as imaginative beings and machines pit themselves against each other in a dual. Taking me back to the days when my Brother and I would sit there for hours around a shoebox of disjointed LEGO pieces, and build battle ships out of LEGO, before we would repeatedly ram them together until they broke in order to see whose latest construct was the strongest. The reason I shared this memory now is because it helps to draw attention to the technique that revels in this advertisement. It effectively attaches itself to a fond childhood memory of viewers, giving it the longevity and breadth needed to appeal beyond the spectrum of just today’s generation of children and parents looking for a quick fix toy to entertain their kids. Nostalgia at its very best! But separate from that, I’m fairly confident this ad would have provoked a few of today’s children to rush upstairs to find their old box of LEGO bricks. It could have been better though, which is perhaps my only qualm. They did not try to build on from this ad -fair enough - they preserved it in its initial form when rerunning it, and I respect that, but I think they could have done something spectacular with the same insight today. Perhaps contemporise the visuals, and drop the Tommy Cooper sound a like for someone more current for today’s generation of children? What do you think? Bring back any memories?
