The Campaign

Within 50 short years, Singapore transformed from a fishing village to the world's most expensive city. But at the same time, Singapore has also been ranked as the most emotionless country in the world. To remind Singaporeans of what makes this world-class city 'home', LEGO looked to our future generation. We imagined what grown-ups saw as a picture of success and created a futuristic Singapore built with LEGO bricks, only to invite children to rebuild the city based on what they'd imagine home to be. The content co-created with children via this social experiment turned into a talking piece amongst Singaporeans.

Creative Execution

LEGO Singapore's social media following has more than eleven millions fans. Working together with a video ad tech company that runs a leading programmatic platform for social video advertising, we leveraged upon that fanbase alongside paid Facebook Ads, boosted posts, and a detailed PR plan both locally and internationally to turn this conversational piece into a talking point. It was a month-long campaign that culminated with Singapore's National Day.

We generated 146 press postings about our campaign from the likes of Fast Company, PSFK, as well as local broadcast like Channel News Asia & Channel 5 - with total earned media worth up to S$1.9 Million. Global titles like Adweek echoed in agreement that “Cities failing to nourish the human spirit are poorly constructed”. More importantly, it struck a chord with Singaporeans. Generating over 6000 interactions and commentaries on social media. In tandem with retail activation, the campaign also generated the largest sales (+41%) increase for LEGO Singapore for that period.

In 2015, Singapore celebrated its biggest milestone with SG50 (50th year of independence). The months leading up to national day saw an unprecedented flurry of branded content on social media that celebrated the nation's success. LEGO Singapore wanted to tap into social media to spark real conversations around a question that concerned every Singaporean and even most citizens living in other highly cosmopolitan cities.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

The target audience were Singaporeans - especially parents. The media strategy was to first introduce via social media branded posts to LEGO's limited edition mini-builds for SG50. Next we invited Singaporeans to submit their own LEGO builds of their fondest memories of Singapore. After positive feelings of nostalgia began to set in, we unexpectedly surprised Singaporeans with the content co-created with children - Rebuild. LEGO went from getting Singaporeans to reminisce about the past, to remembering what they have forgotten along the pursuit of success.