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Lego And The Listening Factory
By James Cherkoff
Expert Author
Article Date: 2007-06-28
I attended a great talk by Helen Venge from Lego Factory - a giant experiment in the world of user-innovation.
 She started by saying that when she joined Lego she was struck that, in comparison to her previous role at Levis, she hardly ever heard the word 'brand'.
Her colleagues just spoke about customers and users all the time.
Internally, Lego Factory is seen as a start-up within a corporation - one designed to explore the new territory of customer collaboration.
Right at the heart of this innovation is that Lego Factory allows users to design and publish the products they would like to see - and that other people can see them and buy them. So we are not talking about Nike-ID personalisation - but a marketplace. Helen explained that Lego had always been aware of a large 'shadow market' of customers collaborating creatively among themselves. For instance, the amazing Brickfilms and Brick Journal. But only with the development of a broadband world has it become conceivable to address this spectrum of niches as a commercial opportunity. Key to Lego Factory's success is the sophistication of its customer collaboration.
No lazy customer profiling here - the company refers to many customers by name.
It offers layered levels of involvement to customers, depending upon their enthusiasm and desire for recognition, ranging from ambassadors to lead users through to certified professionals who make a living from Lego. (Think Listenomics on steroids). Internally, Lego's use of the term 'user-talent' tells you a lot and there's clearly no shortage of it.
One of the greatest challenges of the Factory project has been managing the number of designs sent in for publication - 140,000 in the first year alone. Helene was very open about the fact that the whole process is currently an, 'expensive way to sell bricks' and I asked her if that was true why the project is allowed to continue. Her answer was revealing in its directness - loyalty. In a busy, mature marketplace it's the most valuable quality of all and may explain why its the marketing department, not the designers, at Lego who are most *ahem* challenging about the Factory project.
However, reading between the lines it's clear that Lego see this rich-community route as being full of promise.
The first thought, of course, is that Lego is particularly well-suited to this approach, which is certainly true. But it's also about a different view on the world - one where customers are the talented ones with the interesting ideas. In other words, it's only irrelevant if you think your customers aren't clever or interesting. Welcome to the future people.
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About the Author:
James Cherkoff is a Director of Collaborate Marketing, a consultancy in London which helps companies in Europe and the US operate in networked media environments. He is editor of the blog Modern Marketing and contributes articles to the FT, BBC, Independent, and the Guardian. James speaks at conferences and events around Europe and the US, including MIT MediaLab and Reboot in Denmark. You can here him here. When he isn't knee deep in the blog-world he is likely to be discussing Arsenal FC or playing peek-a-boo.
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