Lego Ideas Proves the Value of Customer Data and Insights

How Lego leverages its customers to aid product design

In 2012, Lady Gaga spent a million dollar to create a media company for one purpose; To build a community site for her fans. The site would become LittleMonsters.com. It has since morphed into an app where her fans can still connect and engage.

There were many reasons why Gaga wanted to create LittleMonsters.com, but perhaps the top reason was she wanted to better collect data about who her fans (customers) were and the leverage that data to better market and sell to her fans.

Here’s how Troy Carter, Gaga’s manager at the time, explains it:

“Pretty much no artist up to this point has really known who their fan base is.  Their fans specifically by name, age, where they live, what they do, what they like, who their friends are, which concerts they attended, which music they listen to, which songs they skip, where they skip them, just really understanding, having real data.

And having that data helps you make better decisions as it relates to the music you release, where you tour, how big the venues are, who you invite, the price of the ticket, how much merch to carry with you. Everything. And these are all going to be data-driven decisions that we’re going to be making.

The move to leverage LittleMonsters.com as a way to collect customer data paid off almost immediately for Gaga. One of the aspects of the site was allowing fans to submit their favorite artwork inspired by and paying tribute to Gaga. She could then take the designs that were proving to be the most popular with community members, and sell it back to her fans as merch at concerts.

Which is exactly what Gaga did. She took the artwork her fans were submitting, picked the designs that were resonating with the community, and then used those designs on t-shirts that were sold at her concerts.

Sales jumped by 30%.

By leveraging content and data that Little Monsters freely created on the site, Gaga and her team were able to make much better business decisions. This included everything from what cities to add to the tour, which venues in those cities, the merchandise at concerts, which opening acts to partner with, everything. Gaga could leverage customer data and content to create a better and more satisfying experience for her fans. And at a lower cost!

That story helps us segue into an analysis of Lego Ideas. Lego Idea was actually started in 2008 in Japan, under the name of Lego Cuusoo. Cuusoo means ‘wish’ or ‘idea’ in Japanese.