Dive Brief:

• Lego is encouraging playful competition this holiday season with the launch of an augmented reality (AR) “Snow Throw” snowball throwing contest, per details shared with Marketing Dive.
• Displayed in the store windows of Lego’s New York and London flagship locations, Snow Throw challenges shoppers to fling digitized snowballs to see which city can throw the most, with a live leaderboard in each store helping to keep score.
• Snow Throw will be live through the holiday season and is part of Lego’s larger “Play is Your Superpower” campaign. The move is an example of how some brands this year are leveraging emerging tech to drive their seasonal marketing efforts.

Dive Insight:

As it looks to get into the holiday spirit, Lego is leveraging AR and the power of friendly competition to bring together shoppers from across the globe. The Snow Throw challenge could shore up a stronger sense of community, a sentiment often tied to the season, while also attracting younger audiences through the use of AR. Others are similarly using buzzy tech to bolster their seasonal efforts, like Coke, for instance, which is expanding its “Create Real Magic” AI platform around holiday postcards this year.

Snow Throw is available to play in the windows of Lego’s 5th Avenue store in New York along with its Leicester Square location in London now through the holiday season, allowing in-person shoppers from either city to go head to head for a digital snowball throwing blitz. The activation was kicked off Nov. 8 with fashion editor Eva Chen and television star Millie Mackintosh, who threw the first snowballs for their respective cities alongside their children.

Following years of pandemic restrictions, several brands this season have prioritized in-person shopping experiences to appeal to consumers ready to step back into the world. For example, Target as part of its holiday blitz has planned a Target Wonderland pop-up tour along with travel-inspired in-store displays. Meanwhile, J.C. Penney has prioritized making its stores more easy to navigate to promote bigger gifting.

The Snow Throw effort ties into Lego’s larger campaign, “Play is Your Superpower,” which was first launched in September. The campaign’s latest iteration, revealed earlier this month, is anchored in a festive 30-second hero spot that features children, adults and lively Lego gifts gathering together for a high-energy snowball challenge. The marketing push is meant to encourage families to prioritize play, per the release, with Snow Throw an extension of that.

“For our Holiday campaign this year we wanted to show how the Lego play experience brings an epic new dimension to transforming festive family moments into something even more extraordinary and what better way to do this than transforming an ordinary family shopping trip into the chance to take part in an epic snowball challenge against fellow shoppers on the other side of the world!” said Natali Stolovic, head of Lego Retail at the Lego Group, in release details.

Tied to its holiday efforts, Lego stores is also running its annual Build to Give initiative, challenging consumers to build a heart from Lego bricks and share it to social media with the hashtag #BuildtoGive. For each post, the brand will donate a Lego set to a child in need.