Why do Lego’s PR stunts get such great media coverage?

Put together a list of Lego-based stunts and it would be as long as your proverbial, from animated Star Wars re-enactments to James May’s house built out of Denmark’s finest export.

During the yuletide season Lego’s excelled itself, building an epic timber number.

They partnered Britain’s favourite train terminus to create a twelve foot Lego Christmas tree, timed ideally to get the brand across every paper I’ve looked at in the run-up to the big day (and a record breaker to boot).

Why does it work?

Because Lego has managed to pull off the trick of convincing enough in media-land that they are a generic a brick rather than a brand – when it suits them to be so.

And, just as if someone had built an epic structure from breeze blocks or straw the fact that Lego is a brand should not get in the way of a good story.

It’s a stunning spot of sleight-of-hand and one that drives the Lego PR machine.

Throw in a stunt in one of the capital’s most iconic buildings, the “UK’s only certified Lego Professional” to build the tree and a Guinness World Record just for good measure ... and you’ve got the kind of stunt that Christmases are made of.

James Gordon-MacIntosh is a managing partner at Hope&Glory PR and from time-to-time pens Spinning Around, a blog that he describes as “thinking out loud”.