Campaign Trail is our analysis of some of the best new creative efforts from the marketing world. View past columns in the archives here.
Actor Tom Holland is best known for portraying your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he’s also played — to name just a few roles — a tsunami survivor (“The Impossible”), a military veteran with PTSD (“Cherry”) and a video game adventurer (“Uncharted”).
In what might be the greatest display of his range yet, the 29-year-old actor tackles being the protagonist in a sci-fi film, a soccer star, a tech innovator, an elderly gardener, a corpulent executive and a trendy artist — all in a two-minute video from Lego.
“Never Stop Playing” utilizes not just a superstar brand ambassador but also the creative power of its iconic brick pieces to demonstrate the transformative power of play. The video is a series of vignettes linked together by Lego-loaded transitions that begins when Holland’s sci-fi actor ends a scene in which he wonders if his character’s proclamation, “To survive, we must stop playing,” is true.
What follows is a series of Lego-powered scenes, from a soccer player kicking a Lego ball, to a tech-talk host with rocket boots, a garden hose that turns organic matter to Lego and an artist in a floral Lego outfit that unleashes 3D Lego art. One vignette even features Holland as an older, fatter executive who has forgotten how to play and how to secure his hairpiece.
Set to AC/DC’s “High Voltage,” “Never Stop Playing” was directed by duo Los Pérez (Tania Verduzco and Adrián Pérez) through Biscuit Filmworks and created by the brand’s in-house Our Lego Agency (OLA) in collaboration with creative agency Chaos x Magic. While the original script used different actors to show various perspectives, one creative decision elevated the video into something greater.
“The genius of someone writing it as one talent playing multiple characters, that's when we went, ‘Now we're talking,’” said Nic Taylor, senior vice president and head of OLA. “It’s got a nice, memorable hook, and if you get that talent right, then this thing will hopefully catch fire.”
The power of play
“Never Stop Playing” is the latest chapter in Lego’s “Rebuild the World” campaign, an overarching platform that maintains that play can be transformative and building creative confidence is essential for people of all ages. For its latest effort, Lego keyed in on an insight that people are playing less at earlier ages. As kids start to come of age, nearly half feel the pressure to grow up quickly and admit that they stop playing with certain toys because they’ve been told they’re “childish” or “babyish,” according to Lego research.
“We felt like we needed to make that aspirational, to make the idea of continuing to play, continuing to use your creative powers a really fun and beautiful way of living your life, no matter what age, and really dramatize the joy of that,” Taylor said.
After unlocking the idea of having all the characters portrayed by one actor, Lego had to find the right brand partner. In Holland, they found a young star who has fans of all ages thanks to his ongoing gig as Spider-Man and an authentic relationship with the brand. Holland grew up playing with Lego with his brothers Sam and Harry, who also appear in the spot.
“For a brand and product like ours, finding universal talent reinforces that idea that this product and this experiences is relevant to all parts of the world and all ages,” Taylor said of Holland’s casting. “He contributed to the script, and he helped us craft the storytelling and the characters and the scenes themselves. It’s a collaboration, more than just a casting of a great talent.”
Beyond Holland, the main character of the spot is the Lego bricks themselves, which make up costumes, sets and props, whether physically or via CGI. For Lego, its bricks are a medium onto themselves — not a product that is simply revealed at the end of an eye-catching advertisement.
“The more we embrace [the bricks], the better the work,” Taylor explained. “We don't shy away from it. We like it to feel as authentic as possible.”
In-house strength
To tap into the Lego medium, the production teams leaned on the company’s specialist teams that know how to build unique pieces — including the brick-built soccer ball, wildlife, megaphone and a custom suit — that appear in the brand’s content. That in-house knowledge also powers OLA.
“When you're inside the company, generating campaigns and ideas on behalf of this brand, you're interacting with more stakeholders on that journey. You've got proximity to the designers, not just the product or brand teams that may be briefing you,” Taylor said. “You've got this kind of access that’s completely new and different, which I think can lead to richer ideas… that may be hard to get when you're at a bit of a distance.”
Taylor, who joined Lego in January 2022 after years at agencies including DDB and McCann, has worked to build the agency’s capabilities around creativity. For example, Carlo Cavallone, the former global chief creative officer at 72andSunny, serves as head of global creative at OLA.
“It’s a creative brand at its heart, so culturally, we're already in the space of creativity, so you're not dealing with any disconnects there,” Taylor said. “We've got access to all areas that you've only ever dreamed of in the external world.”
