Yesterday we looked at the basics of the LEGO Friends line - what the sets looked like, and how they stood on their own merits.
Today, we are going to look at the research, the marketing, and communications side of the story.
The Narrative Shift
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| A classic LEGO Marketing Image from the early 1980s - well before directed play was in vogue |
This image was from a marketing piece done by LEGO in the early 80s. This image has been making the rounds in many debates around LEGO, as a representative of how LEGO used to treat girls. The message is clear - both in the image, and in the expository text next to it. I would agree that this image does not represent the LEGO of today - but not because they don't market to girls the same way as they used to. Well, that's not true - they don't market to girls the same way, but they don't market to boys or any children the same way - and that is not because of any gender differences, but because of clear differences in the evolution of play for children and how LEGO has shifted their product development strategy to accomodate.
In order to understand this, however, a brief account of LEGO history since this ad must be considered.
LEGO had been a productive and profitable company for many years, and had been in a steady state of growth. Founded by a carpenter, it was his son who, Gottfried Kirk Christiansen, who saw LEGO through the boom times of the 70s and 80s. But with the rise of video game consoles and home computing, LEGO's business model was beginning to falter.
In the mid 90's, LEGO was at it's peak. Gottfried passed away in 1995, and the following year in 1996, LEGO had it's most profitable year up to that point. But what happened next was unprecedented.
LEGO had always built itself on a simple motto - if the toy is good, and the play experiences are strong, the profits will come. It is no secret that LEGO had a working environment that bucked the trends of the time - just giving a quick Google of LEGO's work environment reveals this - a creative and fun focused workspace that encourages collaboration.
In 1996, profits for the LEGO Group dropped - and in 1997 they had dropped further. In 1999, the company stood to take a loss of 1 billion kronor - about 170 million USD at the time, and for the first time was facing layoffs. The play experiences hadn't changed - LEGO was still building the same great quality products (I can say from personal experiences that these were great years for building LEGO, with the launch of Spyrius, Royal Knights, Fright Knights, Western, and Aquazone, there were some great and classic themes being launched).
It was the children's preferences that had changed - the appetite's had changed, with self-guided play becoming more scarce, and directed play becoming more the norm. As a video game enthusiast as well, I can agree with the argument that video games' style of interactive play is much more directed, and there have been many studies done about how video games, the internet, and increased technological exposure in general, has changed the way that kids experienced play.
LEGO did not have storylines to direct children's play - this was contradictory to LEGO's philosophy of children guiding their own play. But following Gottfried's passing, his son - Kjeld, the third family member in the line to direct the company - made a tough decision - theme licensed play experiences.
It began with Star Wars. In partnership with George Lucas, LEGO for the first time launched a lineup of toys that not only featured a licensed theme, but also a direct narrative. Certainly, LEGO sets had roles and rough characters before - police, firefighters, construction workers, knights, princesses, spacemen, pirates - but the context behind any of these themes were not proscribed. The characters were largely undefined, and their purpose and relations were unexplored - it was up to the children to build not just the structures, but the personalities for the minifigures as well. The Star Wars sets were launched in 1999, and was a massive success that would not only bring the company back into profitability, but change the direction of the company from one that focused on child-guided play to narrative-directed play. LEGO has since even begun producing a highly successful string of LEGO themed video games, fully embracing the directed experience and moving past even the brick.
LEGO has since built licensing themes with Warner Brothers (DC Superheros, the Harry Potter series), Disney (Marvel Superheroes, Winnie the Pooh), and Sony (the classic Spider-Man movie sets from the early 2000s) and storytelling has become integral to LEGO - not only with licensed themes, but with their original ones as well. The Bionicle line was launched and featured a massive world of characters and tales to direct children's play. Stories, characters, and names were assigned to many of the characters from different lines, such as the Adventurers line, the Knights Kingdom, and the currently popular Ninjago series. Not all sets were directed with accompanying narratives, but many of the best selling series were. These narratives appealed to the changing audience tastes, and although some would argue transformed LEGO irreperably, it in many ways saved LEGO. And at its core, all LEGO, whether intended for a licensed theme or not, ultimately can be taken apart and rebuilt in new and creative ways, and the licensed sets still provide the same number of playing hours: endless, limited only by the user's imagination.
So, getting back to the image of the girl from the 1980s advertisement and how it relates to the LEGO Friends discussion. So much of the discussion on the LEGO Friends line is a belief that LEGO is trying to direct girls to play a certain way, with certain themes, and certain characters - and that this is something that LEGO has done specifically to girls, even though LEGO has been creating directed play experiences for more than a decade. This was a deliberate shift that LEGO made, not just for girls or boys, but as a reflection in the changing play styles of children.
Research, Marketing and Communications
Still, some would argue as to why would LEGO need to launch a line-up of toys that are directed at girls - isn't LEGO supposed to be for boys and girls? I would not argue with the idea that the LEGO Friends line is designed to target girls - and neither would LEGO. But if LEGO is for both boys and girls, then why create this new line?
Well, the thing is that, according to some research, boys and girls don't play the same way. I'm not saying this from my experience, but that in the most general of terms and biologically speaking, there are scientific theories that boys tend to have preferences to play one way, and girls tend to have preferences to play another way.
This may seem controversial, but please, I redirect you to the words 'tend to' and 'preferences.' Neither of these statements are designed to say that all boys or girls play the same and have the same interests divided along clear cut gender lines - that would be preposterous. But what it does imply is that there are trends in the way that boys and girls play, and that this has been scientifically studied and proven. An article over at the National Post states the following:
Research in the field of gender-stereotyping and toys, however, suggests that children have an innate preference for certain types of toys - boys for vehicles and girls for dolls, for example - that is apparent even in infancy, before they understand gender concepts. Boys like "boy toys" before they know they are boys, in other words. A much-debated 2008 study of rhesus monkeys even found that male primates, presumably immune to marketing, preferred trucks to dolls.The article also stated that customer research surveys discovered that, amongst households with children who play with LEGO, only 9% identified that a girl was the primary user of LEGO.
Born out of these pieces of research, LEGO put together an intense 4 year study of more than 3,500 mothers and daughters around the globe to investigate this, why girls were putting down LEGO, and what would keep them more interested. Their own discoveries corroborated some of the theories that boys and girls tend to have different playing preferences.
In early years, while using the over-sized DUPLO line for early builders, LEGO usage was pretty evenly distributed between boys and girls. But between the ages of 4 and 6, as children moved out from the DUPLO size to the standard sized LEGO bricks, the number of girls playing with LEGO decreased substantially.
The thing worth mentioning here is that the LEGO sets targeted for children of this age are mostly of the child-guided play nature, and not directed by narratives. Of the over 300 sets that are on a store's shelf at any time, most of the kits for the 4-6 age group are of the open-ended, bucket of bricks style. These sets were not geared to either gender, and were as close to the traditional LEGO of yesteryear (recall the 1980s advertisement above) as it can get. Even still, girls were tending to put down the bricks and move on to other toys.
Which led to the next aspect of the study - what makes play interesting for girls? What would keep them playing with the LEGO, and why were they putting down the bricks?
Well, in general terms, LEGO research discovered that girls like to project themselves into the bricks and become part of the story, and immerse themselves into the brick worlds more than boys. The challenge was that the girls tastes for realism were more discerning, and that their play focused more on playing inside of the structures than outside and around them. Although many LEGO structures have detailed interiors, many LEGO modern play-sets are designed to be interacted around, as opposed to played inside of.
Getting back to the immersion aspect - one of the challenges was that in order for the girls to become more immersed, they needed to feel a deeper connection to the classic minifig, which lacked the more expressive nature of modern dolls (which many girls transitioned into once leaving LEGO). In requiring more realism, this didn't mean that girls had less imagination, but that girls had a tendency to experience play in a different way than boys, and that having a slightly more relatable avatar bridged that gap. Therein lies the genesis of the minidoll - a minifigure that maintained the rough proportions of the classic minifig, but with a more realistic nature.
But is the minidoll realistic? The previous article in the series delved in to the nature of the minidoll versus the minifgure yesterday, but one thing I failed to tackle was the nature of the proportions. Some of the accusations levied against the minidoll is that it represents a false body-image and promotes eating disorders. Of course, people are entitled to interpret the minidoll in any way that they please - but when I look at it, I don't see anything ridiculously proportioned about it at all - except maybe that it seems to have over-sized hands and feet, and a large head. The rest of the body doesn't strike me as particularly "skinny", nor do I find the eyes to be vapid and demeaning. But that is just one person's opinion - and even though I am a man, I would state that it would perhaps be sexist to state that simply because I am a man, I can not recognize sexism that targets women. However, I am open to discussion on the matter, but my first instinct is that the doll is not intrinsically offensive.
In Part 3 of the discussion, I will dive a bit further into LEGO's specific marketing strategy around the LEGO Friends line, discuss one of the biggest controversial movements surrounding the line, a large petition on change.org calling for LEGO to cease production of the LEGO friends line, and conclude my interpretation of the LEGO Friends controversy.
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