LEGO

There is something wonderfully reassuring about LEGO.

Not because it never changes.

Quite the opposite.

Because somehow, it has managed to change constantly without ever appearing to change at all.

That is an extraordinary achievement.

Like many children of my generation, I spent countless hours sitting on the floor with a pile of brightly coloured bricks spread out in front of me. Sometimes I followed the instructions. More often, I ignored them completely. Houses became airports. Cars became spaceships. Whatever existed in my imagination usually found its way into those little plastic bricks.

Then, one day, LEGO quietly disappeared from my life.

Years later, with my then-toddler children, I found myself sitting on the floor once again, surrounded by those familiar bricks.

They seemed more complex, with lots of themes and licensed characters.

The LEGO world had become bigger, more dimensional and more integrated into popular culture, platforms and trends.

However, something remained absolutely unchanged.

That same satisfying click I experienced as a child was still there for my own children, together with the endless possibilities and quiet encouragement to create something.

My children are now in their mid- and late twenties, and unlike me, LEGO never disappeared from their lives at all. For them, and for many of their contemporaries, it remained a constant.

Over the years, I’ve met many young adult professionals, without children, who happily spend their evenings constructing an intricate Porsche 911, Concorde or the magnificent Star Wars Death Star.

Not because they are chasing childhood memories, but because they genuinely enjoy the process.

Some of today’s LEGO masterpieces contain thousands of individual pieces. The Eiffel Tower exceeds 10,000. The Titanic has more than 9,000. Even Concorde, one of aviation’s greatest engineering achievements, has been recreated with thousands of bricks for adults who simply enjoy building something exceptional.

Somewhere between my childhood and today, LEGO quietly achieved something that almost every brand dreams about, but very few accomplish.

It didn’t simply retain and grow its pool of customers. It also retained and grew its relevance with them.

As someone who has spent a lifetime helping businesses build brands, I have met countless owners who describe the relentless pressure to change.

Consumer behaviour changes; technology changes, retail changes, culture changes, media changes, marketing changes. And competition never stands still.

The temptation, of course, is to believe that the solution to all of this change lies in becoming something different. The danger is that, somewhere along that journey, you accidentally change the very thing people loved in the first place.

LEGO has not made that mistake.

It has embraced blockbuster films, global licensing partnerships, digital experiences, robotics, education, architecture, theme parks, sophisticated collector editions and an enormous adult community to accompany its youth.

It continues to innovate its subjects and context — but has never abandoned the brick.

That’s a remarkable discipline.

I believe there are unique human truths hidden in those little bricks.

Every LEGO builder begins with the same challenge: a finite number of pieces and the discovery and reward of what becomes possible because of them.

Perhaps that is why LEGO has remained relevant for generation after generation. It simply encourages us to explore what could be and gives imagination somewhere to begin.

Great brands can be measured by how successfully they capture a moment. In LEGO’s case, the ongoing contextualisation over decades, whilst refusing to change what makes it unmistakably itself, is a masterclass in brand discipline.

Following these thoughts, I couldn’t help but take a quick peek at how LEGO is doing as a company today. I came across some staggeringly impressive metrics for the close of 2025: a 12% year-on-year increase in revenue, an 18% increase in operating profit and a 21% rise in net profit. Consumer sales jumped 16%, growing at more than twice the pace of the rest of the global toys and games market.

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This then leaves me with only one last thing to say about LEGO – Bravo!

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