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Merson Group > Blog > The Lego House, Billund: Building A Brand Experience By Peter Crawley, Business Development Director

The Lego House, Billund: Building A Brand Experience By Peter Crawley, Business Development Director

5 November, 2023
The Lego House, Billund: Building A Brand Experience By Peter Crawley, Business Development Director

A few months ago, we took our eldest on a surprise trip to the home of Lego – Billund in Denmark. I’d heard good things, but any expectations I had were greatly exceeded so I thought it would be worth sharing the highlights.

As you would expect from one of the world’s leading brands, every single touch point has been considered and implemented with great care and thought. The Lego House (opened in 2017) is testimony to creativity, innovation, and the enduring legacy of the Lego brand. It is more than just a museum or a gallery, it is a living tribute to the magic of Lego, offering visitors an immersive experience that celebrates the boundless potential of play.

EXPERIENTIAL

As with many brand interactions, the experience starts before arriving at the physical location with a great digital ticket booking process. Billund itself is a large town, but with a global mega-brand as the main draw, town planners have made it easy for visitors to get around with clear mapping, wayfinding, and a free shuttle bus from the airport to the key attractions.

The Lego House is a showcase of experiential design, inviting visitors to become active participants in the creative process – a sense of play runs through everything and it was great to see visitors of all ages being involved.

Upon arrival, we checked-in using the self-serve digital kiosks and were presented with printed bracelets with embedded NFC tags. These bracelets were used to enter the attraction, and throughout the day to check-in to the various zones and collect digital memories of your creations throughout the day. When we got home, we were able to download these memories from the Lego House website for prosperity, a lovely touch.

The basement floor is home to a comprehensive museum charting key milestones throughout the life of the brand, allowing us older visitors to reminisce (and bore the younger visitors) about sets from our childhood but also learn about some of the steps the brand has, and continues to make to be a more sustainable company. It was nice to see this area being spoken about knowingly and openly without hyperbole and a recognition that there is a long way to go.

The various colour-coded visitor zones on the upper floors are inked to an overarching theme – innovation, creativity, nature and play. There were a lot of big concepts and important messages being delivered through thought provoking play. The zones are peppered with fantastic experiential physical and digital installations that combined physical and digital channels seamlessly and cohesively – build a physical Lego sea-
creature and watch it swim in the digital fish tank, place a colour coded building onto an interactive city-scape and watch the mini-figures interact differently due to the changing landscape, film a stop-motion Lego movie using items you have built. 

The Masterpiece Gallery on the top floor is an incredible collection of intricate Lego creations, showing just how far the humble toy can be pushed in terms of creativity and imagination. Running through the centre of the Lego House is the Tree of Creativity, a 15m tall structure comprised of 6,316,611 bricks!

One of our favourite experiences was the restaurant, where you ordered your food using Lego bricks – each brick represented a different dish which was scanned by a small digital installation at your table. The screen gave updates on the progress of our meal by way of animations until the meals made their way on a giant Lego conveyor belt through the restaurants and were handed to us by 6ft tall Lego robots – great fun!

Unlike a lot of attractions that shoe-horn in digital experiences for the sake of it, it felt like every physical or digital experience was considered and added value. It’s something we stress to our clients at Merson Group – the inclusion of digital signage or experiential installation needs to add value to the customer journey as well as the business operation, rather than just installing a screen without any consideration for the content or use-case.

DESIGN
From the moment you approach the Lego House, the influence of the Lego brand is unmistakable. The building’s architecture mirrors the iconic Lego brick, an impressive representation of the very foundation of the brand. The building, designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, appears to be a collection of 21 staggered bricks – it’s bold and colourful but at the same time inviting and fun. It is the central focus point of the town, with some of the outdoor areas always open to the public without the need for a ticket.
Stepping inside, it felt like everything had been considered – even down to the dimensions of the ceramic tiles that lined the walls. Based on the proportions of a standard Lego brick and linked to the architectural dimensions, the tiles are only ever be seen as full or half width, no random cuts or awkward joins – it’s a detail that most visitors may not notice but when this level of care and attention is applied throughout, it makes the overall experience just feel ‘right’.

Naturally with a keen eye for signage I was interested to see how this critical part of the customer experience was implemented. A great use of typography, iconography and colour again made navigation feel easy and stress-free. Further, digital kiosks with interactive mapping dotted around the buildings gave a sense of place and when used with the NFC bracelet showed you areas you had already visited.

This integration of traditional and digital signage created a multi-layered experience, ensuring that every visitor can engage with the exhibits in their own preferred way.

BRAND

The Lego House is a branding tour-de-force. You can feel the brand running through every touch point – from the obvious physical implementations such as signage, interior design and interactive exhibitions but also through to the just-as-important service touchpoints like the restaurants, intuitive lockers, and interactions with staff. I don’t recall visiting anywhere that has felt so cohesive, on-brand and well considered as the Lego House.

Screen Shot 2023-11-03 at 11.51.13 AM

In comparison, while Legoland in Billund remains a very well visited destination, we found it lacking in the attention to detail and brand cohesion seen at the Lego House. The Lego House remains fully under the stewardship of Lego HQ and has a singular focus on the brand’s core values, where-as Legoland, which is now operated by Merlin Entertainments felt, in some areas, to be lacking a true connection to the Lego brand. It felt too commercialised and in need of some investment. A good case study in brand guardianship and implementation.


If you fancy a bit of creative inspiration, I’d definitely recommend the Lego House, especially as the 1hr flight from the UK means its all doable within a short overnight break.

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