In a digitally driven ecosystem, connection in the real world has become an increasingly important way to build meaningful connections with distracted consumers.
Experiential is a growing and important marketing gateway through which brands directly engage, in person, with their audience. It allows brands to open up a window into their world and give each consumer an opportunity to experience something others might not. These experiences are often short-lived, adding a degree of exclusivity to the offering as well.
Nowhere is experiential more valuable than when it comes to new product launches. Giving consumers the chance to touch, use or play with your new item can prove vital when it comes to encouraging them to buy. But how to make this engagement even more unique in a world where there’s a pop-up on every street corner just aching to be Instagramed is a significant challenge for marketers.
In this highly-competitive marketplace LEGO have set out to create their own uniquely colourful world in a collaborative project with the French designer Camille Walala. The team, alongside XYZ, created a life-size five bedroom interactive house to mark the launch of LEGO Dots, the brand’s latest release. The House of Dots is inside a two-storey complex of eight shipping containers at London’s Coal Drops Yard and has all the marks of habitation, from a living room to kitchen, bedroom and bathroom.
Designed to appeal to both new and existing fans, the House was built with the help of 180 local schoolchildren and a group of adult LEGO fans using around two million pieces of LEGO Dots. The Dots are flat, 2D tiles that allow kids to play with different shapes and colours that can be used to decorate and design surfaces in a range of patterns. Each tile or bracelet acts as a blank page, allowing children to form and design endlessly.
We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
George Bernard Shaw
The Dots have been designed to give children the space to experiment with colour and pattern rather than building 3D structures. As Lena Dixen, Senior Vice President at LEGO explains: Dots are “a playful new canvas for self-expression and for building children’s creative confidence.”
The art installation is designed to take visitors on a “journey through colour”, with each of the rooms kitted out in a unique palette. Features include a ball-pit bathtub and a hidden door that leads to a mirrored, fluorescently-lit Disco Room. Visitors can design their own tiles, including making bracelets, before leaving the house down an eight-foot slide.
The House of Dots is another example of how brands are recognising the importance of bringing products to life, of providing consumers with a space in which to experience the brand world and try out the launch for themselves. With the installation popping-up ahead of the global launch in March 2020, it also adds an element of exclusivity because visitors know they are experiencing something others will not be able to for a month.
As the playwright George Bernard Shaw said, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” Play is vital to both a child’s mind and growth but also for adults too, especially in our always-on culture. Indeed, LEGO takes its name from the Danish ‘leg godt’ meaning ‘play well’. The House of Dots is there to remind us to slow down, put our phones down and pick up some colourful bricks and just engage with our creativity.
The House of Dots is open until 2nd February at Coal Drops Yard in London’s King’s Cross.
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