Building an advertising campaign for Linde, brick by LEGO brick
Recently long-time client Linde Material Handling Italy came to us at Moskito Design with a challenge: to help the forklift manufacturer create an attention-grabbing advertising campaign in a medium they rarely used.
“We don’t usually do print campaigns,” said Luigi Bindi, Digital Marketing Manager at Linde, when I called him recently to talk about the campaign. “And B2B campaigns aren’t usually as creative as B2C.”
But this time they wanted creativity, and were eager to try something new.
The brief was to create a print advertising campaign for Italy’s most widely-read logistics trade magazines to promote not only the Linde core business ― its forklifts ― but also its new end-to-end logistics services of stocking, picking and loading/unloading.
And they wanted, as Luigi told me, to “make an impact on the market.”
Fixing the concept for the advertising campaign
We came back to Linde with a number of concepts, but the winner was clear from the start: LEGO.
By recreating LEGO sets that showed off Linde forklifts in their various working contexts we hoped to create an eye-stopping campaign that captured the idea of a lot of separate parts ― whether LEGO bricks or logistics services ― working together to form a complete whole.
LEGO is a “great metaphor,” agreed Luigi, for what Linde does everyday. And with Linde’s desire for “more international approach” to communicating this campaign, LEGO seemed a natural choice. It’s a universal language, said Luigi. It’s simple.
Building the campaign, brick by LEGO brick
What came next, however, was no child’s play.
We met with Luigi and a Linde engineer to discuss the specifications for both the forklifts and the warehouse settings to be recreated in LEGO. Then they worked to build the storyboards for the sets.
“It’s complicated,”said Luigi, because even behind the finalized LEGO model project there was “study, planning, analysis and development, just like our work.”
Meanwhile we’d contacted expert hobby LEGO builder Andrea Lattanzio ― who goes by the handle Norton74 ― in Milan. We’d come across his previous work online and when we first called him up ― and caught him on holiday, in Argentina ― he was enthusiastic to take part.
It seemed like “a really good, positive idea,” said Andrea, who by day works in communication for a non-profit company, told me by phone.
Andrea is a proponent of “studless” building, which in LEGO builder jargon means constructing projects in which the signature LEGO studs ― those little bumps ― are made invisible by the use of smooth tiles and a range of techniques.
And now, working from Linde’s blueprints and our digital rendering of the warehouse settings, Andrea began ordering parts and constructing his drafts.
Whatever the size, the rules still apply
However much LEGO might evoke a world of carefree childhood fantasy, when it came to building the model sets accuracy, detail and exactness counted for everything.
It had to be “really close to the real thing,” said Luigi.
Maintaining brand identity was essential, even in the much reduced dimensions. And loading and unloading ports at one point had to be enlarged in the LEGO models.
And while Andrea worked to build, photograph and send drafts from his living room LEGO studio, it became clear that even the tiny LEGO people in the sets had to follow all the rules.
“One issue that came up was safety helmets,” said Luigi. “Even though LEGO is a toy, our clients expect safety and to avoid accidents ― and the LEGO mockup had to reflect the reality of our warehouse operations, including safety conditions as well.”
In other words, all those little workers had to keep their plastic yellow heads securely covered so there’d be no doubt about Linde’s continuous commitment to safety.
Putting it all together
In the end Andrea built a total of 3 sets and 9 forklifts, which he said were “the most challenging and fun.”
For the final shoot we called on photographer Fabrizia Parisi, a long-time Moskito partner, who after initial work in Andrea’s studio transported and reassembled the sets in her own studio to photograph them.
The final results were published in the various trade magazines over 3 months.
Reflecting on the success of the project, Luigi said that he liked that Moskito Design is “positive, flexible and modern.”
And when I asked Andrea if he was hoping to take on many more professional LEGO commissions he said, “only if I get to work on great projects like this.”
At Moskito Design we can help you build your next advertising campaign ― one brick at a time.
