
The Meta-Marketing of ‘The Lego Movie’ - ot
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/magazine/the-brilliant-unnerving-meta-marketing-of-the-lego-movie.html
======
r0h1n
This paragraph from the article represents all that I feel about the rise of
anti-marketing marketing, but couldn't articulate:

> _It’s a counterintuitive sleight of hand: By acknowledging that their
> central message is unbelievable or at least exaggerated, the branding
> masterminds gain our trust and bolster our faith in the brand. Will Ferrell,
> for example, promoted “Anchorman II” and Dodge at the same time by appearing
> on talk shows as Ron Burgundy and declaring that Dodge’s cars were
> “terrible.” Dodge sales spiked. (Ferrell also voices President Business.) In
> New Zealand, Burger King ran YouTube ads of two guys eating Burger King
> while complaining about YouTube ads. Nearly every Super Bowl ad this year
> referred to the fact that it was a Super Bowl ad. The brand — and the TV ad,
> the movie and the fictional spokesman — is hyperaware of its own
> fictionality and thus earns the right to simultaneously denigrate and
> elevate itself as divine._

~~~
samstave
This is the exact problem I have with shows like Jon Stewart and Colbert: when
they can make you laugh at all the corrupt shenanigans in politics and
government; it diffuses the actual need to do anything about it. It creates a
false sense of superiority in the viewers whereby they think "I'm so smart to
recognize how corrupt the government is! Ha ha" and then people go on about
their lives not changing anything because anger has now become nil via humor.

~~~
kirse
It's not just the inaction, I despise the subtler shenanigans, which is the
tremendous influence of using humor to establish truth or falsehood. "Well
it's funny and I'm hilariously entertained, so their message must be true!"

Humor is a great wrapper for the sour pill of deception. At first our
conscience might reflect on the acidity, but given enough exposure, eventually
the mind will heartily consume the sour pill as if it was the sweet truth all
along.

We're firmly at a point in society where truth is not often established by a
hard and uncomfortable examination of facts, but whether or not we _feel_
comfortable and entertained by whatever thoughts are presented before our
minds. Feelings rule supreme over facts in this country, by far.

Does it make me feel good? / Does it make me feel bad? / Do what makes you
happy. -- Just a few of the feeling-oriented mantras society uses for decision
making.

~~~
samstave
Some years ago I wrote up a pretty lengthy piece about how emotional
manipulation is the core of all television ___programming_ __\-- I think it
was on Kuro5hin.. but I can 't seem to find it any more....

Humans who are (intentionally) not taught how to think critically are easily
manipulated via their emotions.

Anyone who thinks that there is not a war on your conscious, fought through
your pavlovian emotional responses has not been paying close enough attention
to the world around them.

~~~
kirse
_Humans ... are easily manipulated via their emotions._

Definitely agree, probably easier to shorten it to that. We all have our
blindspots where we're easily influenced, there's just too much daily data and
information we vacuum up to even consciously process it all. Hopefully I
didn't make myself out as somehow excluded from that aforementioned "society"

Our own personal _" McDonald's of the Soul"_ as Jim Gaffigan says in his stand
up.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YDTfEhChgw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YDTfEhChgw)

------
facepalm
Sounds as if she started from the premise that corporations that earn millions
(or billions? don't know) can never be good, then scrambled for evidence
throughout the piece. Is there any reason to assume that LEGO is really evil?
I for one am thankful for it's existence, because my kid is having a lot of
fun with it.

Also, apparently LEGO is being held responsible for girls liking pink now.
(Hint: pink is not the problem - girls want to signal they are girls, and by
random chance pink got selected as a predominant signal).

~~~
dTal
I don't see that she stated outright or even implied that LEGO was evil, as
such. Just an overpriced, indifferent corporate empire with brilliant,
unnerving meta-marketing. I would say that meta-marketing is the focus of the
article, with the LEGO movie merely being the centerpiece. And I'm really not
sure where you got "apparently LEGO is being held responsible for girls liking
pink now" \- the only reference to pink was a quote from the movie in
question.

~~~
leobelle
> "Overpriced"

Legos are priced at what people are willing to pay for them. If they were
overpriced they would not sell and there would be no Legos. Maybe you are
suggesting that Legos should be cheaper because the material cost do not
justify the prices you see, well again, Legos are priced at what they sell at
and clearly people have voted with their wallets and have said that Legos are
worth greater than the sum of their parts. It would be a disservice to Lego's
investors to price them in accordance with the wishes of people who think
everything should be accessible to everyone. For-profit companies should
responsibly capture all the value they can.

~~~
mindslight
All hail the global superintelligence known as Market. From Him all purpose
and justification floweth. There need be no other.

~~~
leobelle
No, there are clearly real problems with market based economies and issues of
social responsibility. Selling plastic block toys, for which there are cheap
enough alternatives, doesn't really seem to fit in this picture though.

~~~
mindslight
Your original comment basically just stated the same tautology four different
ways, as if it were the last word on the matter. Besides judging the large-
scale results of the system (eg your reference to 'social responsibility'),
we're also entitled to judge the small-scale details vis-a-vis our own
heuristics, even when they are at odds with a market's state.

~~~
leobelle
I'm not sure I understand what your point is. I explained why Legos are not
overpriced, and made some probably unnecessary judgement statements about why
people would call it overpriced. I didn't say Legos are not overpriced because
they are not overpriced, I said they're not overpriced because their products
are selling. Where is the tautology?

~~~
mindslight
Your original comment is basically just different ways of saying that Legos
are priced appropriately because Legos are selling, and Legos are selling
because they're priced appropriately. While this is the extent of the analysis
in terms of simple market mechanics, your main point seems to be to insist
that the _only_ way to judge pricing is how the market responds. This is in
fact trivially wrong because any market is in fact a sum of individual actors
who each form their own judgment.

The net effect of your comment is to further confuse the distinction between
what is expedient/existing and what is _right_ , and to discourage people from
developing an independent sense of the latter (in the same vein as "might
makes right" and "technological determinism").

~~~
leobelle
> "and Legos are selling because they're priced appropriately"

Nope never said that, show me where I said this.

~~~
mindslight
It's a basic tenet of consensual transactions, which you allude to:

> _people have voted with their wallets and have said that Legos are worth
> greater than the sum of their parts_

Also,

> _Legos are priced at what they sell at_ "

If you're taking issue that it's not a direct iron-clad "tautology", then
please insert whatever less-stringent term you please that indicates circular
reasoning by which a process supposedly justifies itself.

~~~
leobelle
> people have voted with their wallets and have said that Legos are worth
> greater than the sum of their parts

That's half a quote. The point you misquoted was very specific, regarding
Legos being priced higher than their material costs works, because people
value Legos for more than the plastic they're made with. That's not a
tautology, that's a simple observation. This is without a doubt the worst
conversation I've ever had about Legos.

~~~
mindslight
I said "allude to", which still applies to your whole quote.

This "conversation" has been terrible because you've been nitpicking for
seemingly its own sake, while completely ignoring any substance of what I've
said.

~~~
leobelle
No it doesn't apply, and thus the substance of whatever you've said doesn't
appeal to me. It fails a heuristic of mine I'll call "throws out false
accusations after misrepresenting what I've said".

~~~
mindslight
If you don't believe that a product's price effects its sales, then you could
have simply stated this several comments back, rather than role-playing a
computer by placing critical importance on the _form_ of my saying why I
assumed you agreed with that widely-held belief. Then we could have actually
talked about the actual non-meta issue.

------
reedlaw
This article reminded me of how much things have changed since I was a child.
I had a yellow Lego castle. There were no movie tie-ins. It was the archetypal
medieval castle, enough to thrill the imagination. Then I thought of another
childhood thrill: tinkering around on an Apple II+. In this case the
transformation is even more obvious. What used to be a company that produced
hobbyist equipment that booted into a BASIC programming language REPL now has
deep ties to the entertainment industry and produces locked-down consumer
devices.

~~~
thatthatis
You have to remember that Lego has two parallel businesses:

Box of bricks - the only thing they were when we were kids.

Models - when we were kids models required xacto knives and volatile glue.
They don't make those models any more (at least they don't sell them in Target
like they used to). Lego has taken over the modeling market, and I think in
net their model products are superior.

You can still buy boxes of bricks, I do frequently for my Lego obsessed son.
Unfortunately, in some respects, Lego is now more a modeling company than a
box of bricks company. In other respects, I've seen it argued that the
transition is the only thing that has kept Lego from shutting down, so the
models enable boxes of bricks to still be sold.

------
yoha
tl;dr: the author thinks the movie is about corporations and seeks for meta-
buzzwords

The beginning of the movie (until the escape) is more of a double-reference to
_1984_ and _A Brave New World_. What comes next emphasizes more on the
philosophy of Lego construction: combining and inventing instead of following
the instructions. At no point in the movie the means of productions and the
society based consumption are questioned. There is not even one clear
reference to liberalism/communism (or such). Some satires do critic specific
things (Starbucks), but that's it.

If you are looking for a hidden marketing message in a movie named "The Lego
Movie", you probably have time to waste. I may sound a little aggressive but I
was unnerved by the fact that the author consider plain activities as hiking
or cooking as necessarily better than creative ones (well, maybe I do not
identify sarcasm). I really don't get how playing with games from Lego can be
such a bad thing: it's just a game, you are not locking them in some
corporation's golden prison.

~~~
MoosePlissken
> I was unnerved by the fact that the author consider plain activities as
> hiking or cooking as necessarily better than creative ones

Cooking involves just as much creativity as Lego, it's a useful skill, and
it's not governed by one massive corporate entity. "Better" is a subjective
word, but those are some nice qualities.

------
delinka
"Overpriced" \- I'd like to see someone attempt to compete with LEGO on their
terms. Mega Bloks don't cut it because they're not the same quality.

So build a new 'LEGO' company, build the bricks to the same quality standards
as original LEGO does, and let's see if you can beat their price.

~~~
specialist
Lego is not over priced.

In the mid 90s, I worked for a toy design startup making plastic parts. Think
"Lego + N-scale trains". (It flopped.)

At the time, there were two awesome toy makers, with two very different
strategies. Lego was open about their manufacturing, but would hide their
designs. PlayMobile was very guarded about their manufacturing, but would
happily preview the designs.

Methinks Lego deterred competition by showing just how hard it was to compete
on quality, PlayMobile competed by making plastic parts more cost effectively
than anyone else.

We play tested everything we could. Made me a toy snob. Sad, I know. Little
Tikes and Duplo are the best bang for the buck for their target age group. I
snear at Brio, Tonka, MegaBlocks, and many others.

~~~
vidarh
My son has lots of LEGO and the occasional little set from some other sources.
It's sad - most of the "inferior" bricks stand out like sore thumbs. You can
spot individual bricks in a sea of LEGO from a decent distance because of the
difference in quality of edges etc.

The only Lego-compatible brand I've come across approaching them in quality
are Kre-O.

------
talmand
I could be totally wrong but I think she dislikes herself more than LEGO. She
too easily gives in to simple marketing to do things she feels she should not
be doing, she buys things she shouldn't be buying, and doesn't the spend the
kind of time with her kids she feels would be best. LEGO is a scapegoat for
her own perceived failings with her kids.

I bet her kids would disagree. After all, they are just kids playing with kid
toys.

I saw the LEGO movie, I thought it was really good. It's a good story about
being yourself, being creative, and standing up for what you feel is right. I
saw the movie with my children and none of us felt the need to suddenly go buy
LEGOs afterwards. We didn't see the movie as a big infomercial, it's just a
movie for gosh sakes. An enjoyable one at that.

Every movie that resulted in retail items selling big was not necessarily
intended to be an infomercial. And the movies that were? So what?

As for her complaint about the girl sets not having fire fighters, why not buy
the sets that have fire fighters? If she only buys the sets supposedly made
only for girls then who is at fault with that?

~~~
dwaltrip
Advertising affects you, whether you like to admit it or not. To steal a line
from the movie, "you are not the special" (sorry couldn't resist).

It wasn't "just a movie". The affect may be subtle, subconscious, or non-
obvious, but it is undeniably there.

Disclaimer: I really enjoyed the movie also.

~~~
talmand
I would say more that it more influences than affects.

But realizing that influence goes a long way in denying it. If the movie was
made for that specific purpose then I would have to say I am the special
because as I said elsewhere, I don't feel the need to purchase LEGOs after
seeing the movie.

I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one. After all, my children who saw the
movie have not started asking for LEGOs.

But it was a fun movie, wasn't it?

~~~
dwaltrip
I would say influencing is one way of affecting. Marketing and branding are
far more than simply converting purchases. Despite me trying to remain self-
aware, I undoubtedly have stronger positive mental associations for Lego
related things after watching the movie. I would be surprised if you didn't
also, regardless of your lack of intent to purchase :)

And it was most definitely quite fun, both on a surface level and for sparking
discussions like these. They did quite an impressive job.

~~~
talmand
Well, I guess I can't necessarily disagree since your explanation requires
admitting things that cannot be proven. I can say that I don't "feel" more
inclined to purchase LEGOs, movie or not, then before. I see lots of the
Ninjago show on Netflix because my daughter likes it, but I don't buy them
that often and she doesn't ask for them.

I guess I would say that any positive mental associations I have is for the
entertainment factor as I liked the movie and the Ninjago show. It certainly
hasn't resulted in a positive enough influence to make purchases. That's the
focus of my comments, that the article that started this discussion seems off
to me because it suggests that the LEGO movie is just a huge branding effort
to convince people they must buy LEGOs. Your comments are much softer than
that viewpoint so I think I'd be more agreeable to your viewpoint than the
article's.

------
GuiA
Isn't "meta" the keyword of the 21st century? I remember reading articles
about "meta modernism" being the thing we're in right now (after modernism,
post modernism and post post modernism)- everywhere from art to culture to, as
this article points out, advertising.

I'm waiting for a plane to take off right now and can't dig up articles, but
maybe a more knowledgeable HN'er can fill in for me.

~~~
Jacqued
"meta" in art and literature was more of a 20th century thing, even an early
20th thing (as you can see in the work of the Avant-gardes) and you can find a
lot of earlier examples, at least in literature, maybe most notably through
books that experimented with diegesis.

I think it's just coming back in fashion in ways that are both a lot more
naive (in their content and their approach) and more sophisticated (in their
forms and that of the subcultures that they use as a substrate) than what the
20th saw.

------
radley
Fraking books. I'm sure we all feel the guilt of letting our kids read books
too early. Fiction, non-fiction, magazine, and _gasp_ graphic novels. And the
movie tie-ins, the fantasy worlds, the sci-fi realms. I knew as soon as I
shared _A Wrinkle in Time_ it was all over. Now they're reading everything and
deep diving into over-consumption. Star Wars fiction, biographies, current
events, and even internet sites.

Fiction is the worse. All the best books get made into movies that my boys
_have_ to see. Sometimes I wish I never picked up a book and instead took them
on hikes and taught them to shoot guns.

 _(That 's about the point I gave up reading...)_

------
cushychicken
Haven't seen the movie, don't watch TV so missed the marketing, but I have to
say that Lego would have to do something SERIOUSLY wrong to cancel out the sum
total of my positive childhood memories of their brand and product.

I mean, goddamn, I almost want to have a kid just so I can justify buying more
Legos.

------
coldcode
Lego is what made me into a programmer, the idea of using my imagination to
create things followed me into adulthood. I still remember old WWDC lunches
where Apple supplied each table with a random collection of lego to create
something and then displayed all of them (I think it was a contest). A room
full of programmers hacking on lego using not just the pieces but anything
handy including uneaten food and implements was pretty amazing.

------
ozmbie
Meta-marketing strategies aren't new, but the LEGO movie is a brilliant
example.

David Foster Wallace covered the topic in his essay, "E unibus pluram":

[http://www.thefreelibrary.com/E+unibus+pluram%3A+television+...](http://www.thefreelibrary.com/E+unibus+pluram%3A+television+and+U.S.+fiction.-a013952319)

> You can find successful television ads that mock TV-ad conventions almost
> anywhere you look, from Settlemeyer's Federal Express and Wendy's spots,
> with their wizened, sped-up burlesques of commercial characters, to those
> hip Doritos splices of commercial spokesmen and campy old clips of Beaver
> and Mr. Ed.

> Plus you can see this tactic of heaping scorn on pretensions to those old
> commercial virtues of authority and sincerity - thus (1) shielding the
> heaper of scorn from scorn and (2) congratulating the patron of scorn for
> rising above the mass of people who still fall for outmoded pretensions -
> employed to serious advantage on many of the television programs the
> commercials support. Show after show, for years now, has been either a self-
> acknowledged blank, visual, postmodern allusion- and attitude-fest,

------
mavhc
Lego, not Legos. That is all.

~~~
MarkTee
"Legos" always sounded weird to me. Interestingly enough, LEGO used to have
this on their site:

“The word LEGO is a brand name, and is very special to all of us in the LEGO
Group Companies. We would sincerely like your help in keeping it special.
Please always refer to our products as “LEGO bricks or toys” and not “LEGOS.”
By doing so, you will be helping to protect and preserve a brand of which we
are very proud, and that stands for quality the world over. Thank you!”

------
benched
The idea that a legitimately great movie can't be based on a product doesn't
make any sense to me. My reigning, hardly ever challenged, favorite movie of
all time was based on a line of toys, and could have been called an
advertisement. But if so it was an ad with a huge all-star cast, one of the
greatest wall-to-wall soundtracks ever arranged, action unrelenting in its
cadence, an epic reveal, and a great script with dozens of memorable one-
liners. The fact that it was part of a larger mini-storm of culture that
included selling toys... means what? Now I have to find room somewhere in my
top 5 for The Lego Movie, because it was that good. What do I care that it was
about a well-known toy? Why would I care whether it was good or bad for the
line of toys? Why would I care whether the toy company influenced the script
at all, when the script is that good?

~~~
penguindev
Do tell what the movie is.

I like the original transformers movie, great dialogue and outstanding jap.
animation.

~~~
benched
That's the one.

~~~
penguindev
Awesome! I won't lie, it's my favorite movie too (perhaps there is a support
group for us somewhere?). I also got a kick out of transformers prime. The
megatron-starscream interactions were always hilarious.

SPOILER BELOW

And as someone who recently built a 4x8 table with a full sheet of plywood to
build legos with my 4 year old son, I got a huge kick out of the end of the
lego movie. It had some surprisingly dark scenes, but I didn't notice the
product placement - but then again, legos were/are my favorite toy.

------
markbnine
Why do people here sympathize with this movie? It starts out as an amusing
corporate satire, but if you really follow the plot, it is disturbing on
numerous levels:

\- the consistent message provided by the hero, is that it's okay to be a cog
in the machine \- the only save-the-day solution provided by the hero is to
"follow instructions" \- all the creatives (the master builders) are captured
and tortured \- Emmit saves the day by martyring himself in some bizarre
Christian allegory where he ends up in the "real" world \- the psychopathic
manager-type tyrant who rules the world and wants to freeze everyone is
declared okay and special at the end

~~~
dsr_
The psychopathic manager-type tyrant is brought over to the side of good when
he _changes_ his behavior due to a realization that he is hurting people with
his actions. He becomes less selfish and more empathetic. He is not redeemed
by believing in the power of a savior; if anything, it's a Buddhist tale, not
a Christian one.

Also, Emmett is a cog who learns to be an individual. Two paths to the same
goal, one from the enslaved worker and one from the slave-master.

~~~
humanrebar
Your point about faith in a savior being important to a Christian allegory is
apt, but...

> if anything, it's a Buddhist tale, not a Christian one

I don't know why any philosophy (religious or otherwise) should get dibs on
the "it's better when people care about each other" message.

~~~
spiritplumber
The one which doesn't try to, should. Bokononism maybe?

------
mathattack
Remarkably, the Lego Movie is PG. I used this as the excuse to keep my wife
from taking the kids. I'm a huge fan of the toys, less so of the advertising.
I used Legos as building blocks to teach the kids letters. They build trucks,
castles, and learn to count with them. I've even been to Legoland, which is
great for kids.

To the point of the original post, it's just the branding and consumerism
that's over the top. I can't wait for them to replace all the Lego Movie ads
at the bus stops and train stations.

~~~
sp332
The Lego movie didn't strike me as hyper-consumerist, and I saw it twice. It
mentioned a lot of sets but didn't promote collecting them or anything. I
figure a lot of people will download the soundtrack, since it's pop
electronica that also works as a hipster-ironic parody of itself.

What I got from the movie was a well-developed cynicism of authority. It
wasn't nihilist, but very anarchic. The message I got was: have fun making
things, but don't expect anyone else to respect or even understand them.

