AMBIENT: LEGO – BUILDERS OF SOUND
By Malay Desai From: Germany, created by Serviceman Munich For the first time this year, Star Wars was shown in European cinemas in 3D, coming in with a huge buzz. Danish toy maker Lego, of the world famous ‘bricks’ created a giant musical organ for this occasion. Made out of 20,000 Lego pieces specifically placed on a barrel which would hit the keys of a keyboard, this ‘organ’ created the signature film tune once the barrel was moved by a fan outside. This installation was placed in several theatres in Germany showing the film, along with a QR code which led to buying the Star Wars Lego sets online. Fans from other countries had a microsite to feel the same experience. Why we Like We’d heard of film merchandising, but this is quite something else. Nearly all popular film franchises, from The Avengers, Bond and Harry Potter, give several opportunities to showcase brands across global cultures. While we’ve seen the routine (games/toys/ apparel) ones, it takes a giant idea to gel with a giant film, in this case, a classic that cuts across generations – Star Wars. Lego is known for witty advertising especially in the print genre (look up the logos of popular TV shows it made using signature blocks!), but this effort is a new landmark in ambient advertisements. Expectedly, it has earned high praise from tech gurus, marketers and of course film fans, and all of it is deserved. The reason? It’s that ‘big idea’ executed. Surely, the first spark of ‘Let’s stick 20,000 Star Wars Lego pieces and create an organ that makes music’ would’ve caused hilarity, but the agency knows better that it takes something as unbelievable as this to further the image and tagline of the brand – ‘create the impossible’. The process, as a video explains, involved translating the theme tune into a matrix, transferring it to the barrel and sticking the Lego pieces precisely so they hit the right notes when the barrel circles toward the keyboard. The campaign that involved so much precision wouldn’t overlook the marketing aspect in it. Once the special Lego blocks caught the fancy of the young and old alike, they had a QR code to scan and buy the product. We’re giving this the ‘Greatest Call-to-Action’ of the year award! The last time we saw a campaign so minutely executed, it involved sticking sesame seeds atop Wimpy’s burgers to make a Braille message for the blind! Don’t ask if that made news too. Our marketers, who’re getting increasingly obsessive about tagging their brands with Bollywood’s biggies these days, could do with such gigantic thoughts, and so could the film’s producers, who have the power to create something like this at a fraction of their budgets! May the force be with them!
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