The Lego Movie: TV Advertising

Thursday 22nd March 2018
LO: To evaluate the methods used to market The Lego Movie; to link the methods to the target audience.

• Lego and Warner brothers teamed up to make the film.
• The adverts were on Peak time Itv to get the message to families- around 6/7 Friday/Saurday evening.
• They created the worlds first all Lego Tv ad break- adverts for different products were made out of lego.
• In dancing on Ice, 9th Feb 2014, 7:27 pm, the lego ad break was broadcasted. Five days before it was released.
• Products and brands: British Heart foundation/Confused.com/Bt Infinity/Premier Inn/The Lego Movie advert(40secs)
• The ads were separated by five different two second "stings" featuring characters from the movie.
• Itv also introduced the break with a voiceover informing viewers that to "celebrate a much anticipated new movie, we've assembled a very special ad break"
• Integration: Using one product to promote another.
• Same time it was shown live, it was released in full on Youtube. The four participating brands had a block party on social media.
• The reaction across social media was immediate and overwhelming. The amount of tweets per day increased by five times as many. Nearly 6m people live, and around 1.1m went to look for it on youtube just within a week. 
• No paid for digital optimisation- didn't pay youtube to put it up the top of the page or anything. 
• Written about it in over 60 different publications.
• The movie ended 2014 at no.1 in the UK box office charts, wasn't just the best performing kids film of the year, best performing film of any kind.

Explain how the Lego Movie broke boundaries with branded marketing, how it targeted the different sections of their target audience and whether it was successful or not.

The Lego Movie broke boundaries when advertising the release of the film five days before. They targeted the three major target audiences. People watching Dancing on Ice were shown an all Lego ad break on the 9th of February on Peak time ITV at around half seven in the evening, because they did it at this time, many of the viewers were parents sat with their younger children. It was very successful and there was almost 6 million viewers. For the people that missed the adverts, it was released in full on youtube at the same time, the target audience of young adult cinema goers were many of the 1.1 million viewers in the first week of upload. Social media publicity reactions were immediate and the amount of tweets a day increased fivefold. The brands of the adverts included: The british heart foundation, Confused.com, BT infinity and the Premiere Inn. They recreated the recent adverts of the brands but with Lego.