Four Aces Agency

THE FOUR ACES AD AGENCY

TAYLOR WILCOX GIANNA LOMBARDI HALEA MCATEER CODY HASTINGS

Table of ContentsAgency Overview The Four Aces....3 Clients..3 Lego Company Profile Company Information .4 Previous Lego advertisements Girls Love Lego Toy Blocks too! .6 Imagination .9 Builders of Tomorrow .10 Competitors Share.12 History .13 Hasbro.13 Mattel .13 Target Market The Family..15 Strategy Statement...17

Media Placement Magazines.18 Mall Posters...18 Social Media Placement ...19 Budget................................20 Advertisement Strategy ..21 Print Ad Examples..23 Measuring Success of Campaign...28 Future...29 Sources ..30

2

The Four Aces Ad Agency

Halea McAteer

Taylor Wilcox

Gianna Lombardi

Cody Hastings

The Four Aces is a close-knit group of Regis University graduates. We created our company in 2005 after graduating on the basis that we wanted to make a difference in the toyadvertising world. With all of our combined skills such as computer savvy abilities, creative minds, organizational readiness, and a growing passion for toy advertising, we have become a well-noted agency in the Denver Metro area. We hold our customers needs to our highest priority, which has helped us grow and build our client list to over ten different toy companies.

Clients:

Nerf Leapster Hot Wheels Play-dough Slinky3

Lego Company ProfileThe LEGO Group began in 1932 in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen, a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began by making wooden toys. In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means, "Play well". In 1947 the Lego group expanded and started creating the famous interlocking plastic bricks, which are commonly recognized today. Currently, the LEGO group is a privately held company still based in Billund, Denmark where the company is still owned by the Kirk Kristiansen family. Today, the LEGO Group provides toys, experiences and teaching materials for children in more than 130 countries. The LEGO Group also has approximately 10,000 employees, and it is the world's third largest manufacturer of play materials. Since its creation in 1932 the LEGO Group has been engaged in the development of children's creativity through playing and learning. The LEGO groups mission statement states, Our ultimate purpose is to inspire and develop children to think creatively, reason

4

systematically and release their potential to shape their own future and experiencing the endless human possibility. It is the LEGO groups vision to, pioneer new ways of playing, play materials and the business models of play by leveraging globalization and digitalization, it is not just about products, it is about realizing the human possibility. LEGO can realize their vision by continuing to provide high quality toys that stimulate creativity and thinking while kids play and have fun.

5

Previous Lego Campaigns

6

Girls Love Lego Toy Blocks too!

7

Girls Love Lego Toy Blocks too!

In 2012, Lego created the campaign Girls Love Lego Toy Blocks too! Something that Lego has been known for is their consistency. No matter the many licensing deals that Lego has gained, it still comes down to the same bricks that they are known for. When developing the print ads for their new campaign, which was geared towards girls called Lego Friends, Lego wanted to stick with the consistency that they are known for. In doing so, they took their print ad from 1979 and merrily updated it to whom their new target market was. Although the ads are 35 years apart the ads may look similar but yet still have a noticeable difference. In the 2012 ad, it features a girl who symbolizes the one attribute thats as important to Lego as consistency which is adaptability. Before this 2012 ad, Lego had tried but significantly failed to entice the female audience. After the launch of this campaign, Lego Friends, which targeted girls, sold twice as well as initial expectations and helped triple sales to girls. Wi th the Girls Love Lego Toy Blocks too! campaign it shows that creativity among boys and girls is different. Boys are more linear creators and like to replicate what is on the box, where as girls create their own environments and develop personal stories and imagine themselves living in the house that they have built. In the 2012 ad campaign for Lego Friends, Lego went with the tag line Its as one of a kind as she is. to show that the parental approval of the 1978 ad has matured to self-satisfaction. The young girl is proud of her creation because it is as unique as her. Lastly in the 2012 ad, the extra blocks left behind capture the idea that she made something without instructions such as the 1978 ad.

8

Imagination This Lego advertisement won the Cannes Lions in 2006. Because of its simplicity it allows the creativity of young children to go beyond what you may see. That is the way Lego works. By putting some of the plastic bricks together, kids are able to create their own world. This is what Blattner Brunner was trying to get at when he created the campaign. The images show a couple of Lego bricks with no specific shape but the shadows are able to reflect a kids fantasy and the object the bricks are supposed to be. The imagination campaign was one Legos greatest advertisements because it helped Legos sales increase to 2.96 billion from 2.82 billion in the first half of 2006. It is through this success that Lego was able to capture more market

9

share in the toy industry as well as continue to lock up market share in the building set category.

Builders of Tomorrow The builders of tomorrow campaign was released in 2010 and was created by 360 Public Relations LLC. The print advertisements features a classic 70s household where the parents are looking on in astonishment of the Lego creations of their kids with the simple tagline builders of tomorrow. Lego released this campaign to create a platform from which to talk to parents about the importance of fostering creative play early and often, the benefits of which children would reap immediately and also well into the future, as creative, successful adults. As a result of this campaign the Builders of Tomorrow website has been featured in dozens of media outlets, including national parenting, kids and classroom publications (American Baby, Boys Life, Big Apple Parent, Learning, Time For Kids and Weekly Reader); newspaper and magazines (Newsday, The New York Post, The Washington Post, Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Providence Journal, St. Petersburg Times, Berkshire Eagle, Buffalo News, Salt Lake Tribune and WHERE Philadelphia); and online outlets (About.com, Child.com, Momstown.com10

and more) as well as in audio releases. The total circulation of media that featured the website is 46,567,247 translating to 92,186,083 impressions with pass along. So as you can tell this print advertisement attracted a lot of attention within the target market.

11

Competitors ShareHasbro Toys, games, media and entertainment Pawtucket, Rhode Island 2nd US$4.07 billion Mattel Toys and games El Segundo, California 1st US$ 6.2 billion LEGO Toys Billund, Denmark 3rd EUR 2.956 billion or US$ 3.86 billion

Industry Headquarters Market Ranking (Based off Sales) Sales Revenue

The size of the global toy market is estimated to be at 84 billion U.S. dollars in 2012, 20 billion U.S. dollars of which are attributable to the U.S. market. The direct economic impact of the U.S. toy industry is at about 29 billion U.S. dollars; supporting approximately 250 thousand jobs. The United States leading toy-manufacturing companies are Hasbro, Mattel, and LEGO. The combined revenue of these three companies amounted to almost 20 billion U.S. dollars in 2011. In 2010, averages of 284 U.S. dollars were spent on toys per child in the U.S. In the building sets category, Lego is the majority market share leader and in 2012 increased its market share by 5.3 points to 84.6%, having manufactured 48 of the 50 bestselling sets. In the building segment aimed at preschoolers, the company increased its market share by 12.1 points to score 51.4% of the market.

12

Competitors HistoryHasbro Since 2007, Hasbro has begun a new strategy to build the brand into a worldwide franchise that now includes live-action movies, video games, publishing and even theme park rides. Their most recent focus has been the launch of Transformers products. Hasbro started the Transformers franchise with a Japanese partner in 1984. The original concepts of the Transformers products were to create robots disguised as everyday objects that can be targeted to 5-year-old boys. But as those boys have grown up and had children and even grandchildren, Hasbro has expanded the brand into other media and added new toy lines to appeal to everyone from toddlers to adults. The only problem with this strategy is that sales figures suffer when there is no Transformers movie in theatres. Investors expect sales in the boys category to decline this year as well, but to rebound in 2014 when the next Transformers movie is released. Felicia R. Hendrix, a Barclays analyst stated that. The real problem around this is that their boys line seems to be very movie-driven, Ms. Hendrix added that Hasbro should try to make the brand more evergreen. Mattel Like Hasbro, Mattel has taken a multiplatform approach, expanding its brands to television, the Internet, publishing, video games and licensing. Mattel is the worlds largest toy company by revenue, and has several established intellectual properties, including die-hard brands like Barbie and Hot Wheels and newer ones like Monster High. The most recent campaign has been focused on the sale of Barbie dolls. In the past election Mattel had a clever,13

timely and inspirational campaign when it put Barbie in for the presidential race. What Mattel did was dress up Barbie dolls to look like the presidential candidates and even first lady Michelle Obama in hopes of creating buzz. But even with all of these cool details in place, the company faced a deadline that could potentially stop all of the word-of-mouth it had earned: Election Day. In hopes of solving this problem Mattels social media managers, Travis Harding and Jessica Kimiabakhsh, explained how they used a variety of social media platforms to get fans interested and continue advocacy, even after Barbies presidential campaign was over.

14

Target MarketOur target market for this campaign is full time working mothers with 2.5 children. This target market is apart of the Generation X meaning that they re of the age group currently between 28 and 45 years old. The Generation X parents are a perfect target market for your product because they grew up playing with Lego when they were kids.

The Happy Family We have created an ideal happy family that we perceive our target market to be. Our targeted mother is Elizabeth, age 31. Her husband is Jeff, age 33. Jeff and Elizabeth both have full time jobs working to support their two young children, Katie, age 7and Ben, age 5. Jeff works for an accounting firm and enjoys watching and teaching Ben about football and supporting Katie with her gymnastics. He and Elizabeth met at the University of Michigan where Elizabeth began working for her current job at a oil and gas company. Elizabeth reads the monthly Parenting magazine, Family Fun, and Womens Health. She keeps up to date with the15

newest trends in fashion, new recipes, and DYI projects to make for her house and crafts for her children. She has been getting very frustrated with Ben and Katie because all they want to do is play on the X-box and their parents iPads. She has been looking for new toys, crafts, or games that will get her kids off the technology and outside or playing and creating things with their imagination.

16

Strategy StatementIn developing this campaign, its purpose is to reinforce the identity of Lego as a product that promotes creativity and learning. These advertisements will focus on pulling kids away from technology and video games and encourage more hands on creative activities that will engage these childrens minds in a way that sitting in front a television or iPad simply does not do. This will be best accomplished by marketing the ads towards parents, specifically mothers, to encourage their childs growth and hopes of having a more successful future due to the learning and expansion that Lego will provide for their children. In order to reinforce Legos identity as a product that does these things, the ads will focus on promoting the block products of Lego. That way, the advertisements are focused solely on the product rather than promoting a movie or video game that is partnered with Lego. The strategy of these ads will be to show people that Lego promotes creativity and learning like no other product on the market does right now. Due to this creation, and learning experience we will show in the advertisements the potential this creates for children.

17

Media Ad PlacementMagazines To reach our target market in the best ways possible, we plan to put our Lego print ads into five different magazines for one year starting summer of 2013 to the summer of 2014. Each magazine chosen will have the best opportunity to reach working mothers and their spouses. The first magazine chosen is Parents magazine. They have twelve issues a year that circulate to 2.2 million readers. The second magazine is the Scholastic Parent and Child magazine that reaches over 150 million families. The third magazine is Family Circle that reaches over 4 million readers. The fourth magazine is Family Fun that has over 2 million readers. The final magazine we have chosen to place our ads in is The Working Mother magazine that half a million readers. We chose all of these magazines to reach out and get out ad to parents, especially mothers who are looking for new, creative ways to spend time with their children, teach their children, and grow with their children. Mall Posters The second way that we will place our advertisements is in Mall poster ads in 6 major malls across the United States for one-year starting summer of 2013 to the summer of 2014. Each mall will have 8 posters that run through the year. These six malls are in the Top 10 list for biggest and most popular malls around the United States. Of the six malls chosen, two are from the East coast, two from the Midwest and two from the West coast. On the East coast we picked Sawgrass Mills in Sunrise, Florida and The Shops at Columbus Circle in New York City, New York. Both of these malls have low priced and high priced stores making it a great place for families to shop at. In the Midwest we chose to place our ads in the Mall of America in18

Bloomington, Minnesota and in The Galleria in Houston, Texas. Mall of America holds over five hundred stores and The Galleria holds close to four hundred store. Both bring in millions of tourists and people to shop. Finally on the West coast, we picked two major malls in California. The first, The Grove in Los Angeles and the second, South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa both bring in massive amount of people to their shops that range from luxury store to a basic supermarket store. Within these malls we want to place the poster ads in children play areas, food courts, directory stands and around the more predominate childrens toy stores. Not only will the ad catch the eye of children, but will also capture the attention of mothers and other parents shopping with their children.

Social Media Placement: Currently, there is already a page for Lego on Instagram and Facebook, but not one for your product on Twitter. To further encourage and market this wonderful product, we will incorporate this advertising campaign into every social media site available. Using the hashtag myLEGOcreation will effectively do this. Due to the fact that this specific ad campaign is directed towards parents, and not just the child, using social media will help encourage the parents to show off the creativity of their child through pictures posted on Facebook, Instagram, and now with Twitter.

19

BudgetBillboard Mall Ads: 50 dollars to make, $5,500 a month for a package of 8 ads in the malls We will put these ads in 6 malls in 6 Mega Malls in America It cost $400 dollars each package $5900 = total a package 6 malls x 6 states= 36 packages 36 packages x $5900 a package = $212,400

Total for 6 mall displays = $212,400.Magazines: Family Circle: $904,500 1 ad in 12 issues Parent and Child: $1,359,763 1 ad in 12 issues Parents: $2,264,880 1 ad in 12 issues Family Fun: $1,064,350 1 ad in 10 issues Working Mother: $421,890 1 ad in 6 issues

Total for 5 magazines = $4,655,620 Total for all advertisement placements is $ 4,868,020. Remaining Balance: $1,131,980 With is remaining balance we will use it for any adjustments that your company needs or choses to change.

20

Advertisement StrategyFor this advertising campaign, in order to effectively market to our targeted audience, we are setting up the ads in what we call a then and now type of advertisement. The idea is that there will be one picture with a child playing with our Lego product. He or she will be designing a creation of his or her own and in the next picture which is the now there will be a well known, successful person in the world today. This will signify how children that use Lego are creators and better learners due to the challenges and imagination that it brings to a childs world, while keeping the focus of the ad on the Lego product. The tagline that will be placed in every advertisement will state Creating Today, Leading Tomorrow. This shows that by using this product, children will grow to be successful people with innovative, new ways of doing things. It will be continued through this campaign with the classic red square with Lego printed in all caps, and bubble letters in the bottom right hand corner. The words Creating Today, Leading Tomorrow will also keep with the flow of previous advertisements by Lego. The font of the tagline will be Charcoal CY, which is keeping consistent with past advertisements tagline font. The tagline will be white text with a black boarder in order to keep it simple and clean, while carrying the consistency and branding that other advertisements have created. Under the Lego logo, there will be the hashtag #myLEGOcreation. This will be in the same font as the tagline and yellow in color in order to stand out, but not over power the tagline as well as go with the theme of Legos coloring. The words creating today will always appear in the upper left hand corner while the words leading tomorrow will consistently appear in the bottom right hand corner with the Lego logo and the hashtag.

21

There will be both male, and females represented in the advertisements but the children will fit the mold of our target market described earlier. All of the children will be playing at home with their creation by Lego. The advertisements will vary between horizontal and vertical pictures, meaning some of the pictures will be displayed side-by-side as the then and now layout, or top and bottom. Their Lego creation featured in either the top picture, or the left picture, will be brought to life in the second picture as a grown up, successful person with all of his or her ideas brought to life.

22

23

24

25

26

27

Measuring Success of our CampaignTo measure the success of this campaign we will run it for a year starting summer of 2013 to the summer of 2014. In the summer of 2014, we will measure the number of times that our hashtags appear and are mentioned in Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We hope to generate over one million followers on our newly created Twitter account. We will also conduct customer surveys given out online on our Facebook page and Twitter account to ask customers what they thought about the #myLEGOcreation campaign that they saw in the six major malls across America. From data collected, we plan to continue to continue the campaign and make any needed adjustments as told from your company, and from the needs and wants of the consumers.

28

The FutureFor the future of this campaign we would like to spread it out nation wide! The future goals include moving mall poster ads to malls all over the nation, not just in the six major malls in America. We would love to move this ad campaign onto a Billboard above Toys R Us, in Times Square after it becomes a successful, nationwide known campaign. This is an ideal placement due to the large numbers of consumers and tourists that visit this specific toy store location every year. With the strengthening of Legos image as a brand after this campaign, the possibilities are endless to continue your companys success.

29

Sources:Klara, Robert. "Lego's Consistency Has Been the Key to Its Success." AdWeek. 2013 AdWeek, 9 Feb. 2011. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. "LEGO Ad Campaign." CLDFX RSS. CLDFX, Oct. 2009. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.

"LEGO Ad Campaign." CLDFX RSS. CLDFX, Oct. 2009. Web. 17 Apr. 2013. "Lego Posts Higher Sales - USATODAY.com." Lego Posts Higher Sales - USATODAY.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2013. "LEGO Builders of Tomorrow Campaign." Council of Public Relations Firms. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2013. News." Lego Increases Its Market Share in the US. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2013

Schmidt, Gregory. "Classic Toys Redesigned To Traverse Generations." The New York Times. The New York Times, 02 Mar. 2013. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. Statista." Statista RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2013

http://www.meredith.com/mediakit/parents/print/rates.html http://www.meredith.com/mediakit/familycircle/production/2013/national-ad-rates.html http://www.travelchannel.com/interests/shopping/articles/top-10-us-shopping-malls

30