Lego Print Ad

One of the case studies in Ads to Icons described an ambient marketing campaign for Lego in 2005. The campaign was simple: select buildings in Santiago, Chile were made to look as if they had been built out of Lego blocks. This was accomplished by hanging posters on the buildings that exactly matched the real building facade with one small exception: each poster had a small segment designed to make it look like a portion of the building was missing. Visible in that empty space is are the "Lego pimples". To anyone passing by, it appeared as if someone had constructed the building out of the plastic building blocks and then removed one of the blocks.

If I were to convert this campaign into a print media format, I would change the approach slightly. I would use images of famous city skylines (New York, San Fransisco, Boston, etc) and remove one building from the shot. The building would then be replaced by a building of the same shape, but built entirely out of Lego's. Imagine the Golden Gate Bridge made out of red Lego's or the Empire State Building made out of blue Lego's.

This approach does not have the same "is it real" response the buildings in Chile had, but it still accomplishes the goal of linking Lego's with the everyday world. At first glance, the images will appear familiar but having the one building made out of Lego bricks will cause the audience to stop and take another look.