Presenter: Jake McKee of Ant's Eye View
Title: How LEGO Caught the Cluetrain
Main Point: Embrace what your community is doing without your help. Also look at highly-engaged but small segments of your market – they might provide a new way for you to do business.
Take-away Action: Determine if you have customers outside your normal demographic that are high-value.
Notes:
Lego didn't accept “unsolicited” product ideas. This turned into a culture that Lego couldn't talk with their customers at all.
Lego noticed that Adult Consumers had created a large secondary market for trading/purchasing pieces. And that community had already created tools that the community wanted/needed.
When you have community members committed and they come to you for acknowledgment, you should ask what you can do for them.
Talking with the highly engaged minority can provide a lot of good information.
Changes to social media engagement starts with a change to culture inside the company.
Core of Lego community effort focused around their shift from selling boxes to creating a creative medium (i.e. what you can build)
Lego has a tool that you can design an object, submit it, and have just the pieces you need to build that model sent to you.
Take advantage of consumer evangelists can be more effective than your own PR.
