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In July Greenpeace launched a global campaign calling on Lego to end its co-promotion with Shell because we believed Shell is leading the race to exploit the Arctic’s oil reserves under the rapidly melting sea ice.
After overwhelming pressure from the campaign, Lego confirmed on Thursday the end of its 50 year relationship with Shell. Greenpeace has been campaigning to save the Arctic for a number of years. The Arctic sea ice is vanishing at record speed to unprecedented lows due to climate change.
Now that Lego have confirmed they will no longer partner with Shell, here are a few of our reflections on how we built enough pressure to topple the deal:
Be disruptive and cheeky
In our viral video watched by over 6m people, an Arctic Lego diorama and all its cute inhabitants and animals, drown in oil. It was Lego alright, but not how the world knew it. And was that a remix of the theme tune to the hit Lego movie? Is that even allowed? We risked a copyright conflict, and staged a toy-shaped disaster, to bring home Lego’s collusion in Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic. The impressive production gained respect of the design and advertising communities, who helped deliver our message to new audiences.
If it’s a one-way conversation, keep talking
Apart from a statement responding to the launch of our campaign, Lego remained tight-lipped. This could have been awkward for us, but we saw it as a sign that our campaign was being taken seriously by Lego’s decision makers. One device we used to scandalise their silence was to deliver our petition to their door. We went to Lego’s headquarters in Denmark and in the UK to force a response from Lego, but they shut down the front desks and refused to receive the list of thousands of names. The story of Lego not listening to its consumers escalated the campaign.
Work with children and animals
Sometimes you’ve got to rewrite the rules. We felt that Lego forfeited its responsibility to children by allowing Shell to wheedle its way into playtime and normalise its brand for the next generation. It needed a new approach so for the first time, and entirely safely, 50 children led a peaceful protest outside Shell’s office in London. As three arctic animals made of giant Lego took shape, the scene visualised the innocence of play and made space to discuss how climate change threatens children’s futures. Lego’s status as a trusted and family-friendly children’s brand was at the heart of why many commentators saw the Shell-branded toy range as irresponsible and inappropriate.
Make it real
As the next phase of toy collectibles began to appear in petrol stations – including a Shell-branded Lego oil tanker – Shell announced their plan to resume drilling in Alaska. This gave the campaign a tangible sense of urgency. We foresaw a potential PR nightmare for Lego’s alignment with Shell, and used the hook to push the petition up to 1m names. Around the same time we invited a journalist to participate and report on a creative ideas session with top designers and creative agencies. This ensured Lego heard it on the grapevine that we were planning our next big push.
Creativity is everywhere
Co-creativity is one of our biggest assets when we’re up against daunting PR budgets or chummy political ties that oil companies enjoy. We invited our supporters and allies to shape the campaign with us. We started a mini-figure backlash by sneaking into Legoland in Windsor to set up pocket-sized banners on the models of Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower. We distributed 5,000 mini figures to dozens of local groups to take to Lego stores and engage the public in mini protests. And we launched a competition asking our supporters, the Arctic needs your imagination, what would you build to save it? Their efforts were instrumental in multiplying the voices in the call for Lego to drop Shell.
Elena Polisano is a arctic campaigner at Greenpeace UK
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