LEGOs and the Basics of Content Marketing

The LEGO Movie (2014) grossed more than $468 million worldwide over its eight-month run, making it one of the highest-grossing films of 2014. In fact, in its opening weekend alone, it recouped the production budget with $69 million. By comparison, the second highest-grossing film during that same weekend, The Monuments Men (2014), only grossed less than a third.

The movie turned out to be LEGO's ace-in-the-hole in its marketing campaign. Following the movie's debut in February 2014, new backlinks swelled to almost 30 times the backlinks last year. All the talk about the movie raked in a lot of links to the LEGO website. Children have been playing the blocks in the past, and thanks to the movie’s widespread popularity, they're more likely to play with them again today.

SEO experts deconstructed this marketing coup and explained that it had fulfilled the five basic elements of content marketing:

• Entertainment – The movie had a good story for people of all ages.
• Education – Certain characters exemplified certain stages of psychological development.
• Humor – The gags were truly funny.
• Emotional – There's always a part of a movie when a character decides to go for broke and does what must be done.
• Storytelling – It's a story people will talk about, even well beyond its closing.

These elements basically sum up what Internet users want to see right now. With a combination of any or all of these ingredients, your content will thrive—as long as it's a story worth writing.