Lego Company

2009-01-0119

Corporate Branding: Lego Company

1. Brand Hierarchy:
Brand Hierarchy reveals an explicit nesting of all brand names by displaying the number and
nature of common and distinctive brand name elements across firm’s products. An effective
brand hierarchy provides a structure to the brand family, allowing consumers to "fill in the
gaps” and establish expectations and perceptions of the entire brand family based on what they
know about one or some of the individual brand levels.

2. Challenges faced by Lego brand in 2002:

Lego faced major challenges of brand positioning towards customers due to the lack of
integration of vision, culture and image. It resulted in fluctuating financial performance, and
even more competitive and rapidly changing marketplace brand fragmentation presented top
management with dual challenges of maintaining a focus on the substance and distinction of
Lego Group heritage. Alignment and elaboration of the brand vision for individual business
areas and markets was also a challenge.
3. Why did company’s management decided to shift to corporate branding? Was this the
best branding strategy for the company?
The company decided to shift to corporate branding to overcome brand fragmentation due to
brand extensions into software, lifestyle products and accessories and to maintain distinction of
LEGO company heritage as it was becoming weak due to increasing innovation and expansions

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 Lego Company
2009-01-0119

The fragmented character of the Lego brand was partly due to the organizational processes
involved in managing the brand and also there were organizational challenges to the Lego brand
related to vision, culture and image. The corporate branding process aligns strategic vision,
organizational culture, and stakeholder images which were necessary for the strategic alignment
as well as alignment between consumers and employee understanding of the brand. . But the
company should have capability to find balance between global vs. local, centralization vs.
decentralization and heritage vs. relevance.
4. Explain the Vision-Culture-image (VCI) Model.
This model defines a successful corporate branding process as the alignment of strategic vision,
organizational culture, and stakeholder images. Strategic vision is the central idea behind the
company that embodies and expresses top management’s aspirations for what the company will
achieve in the future, while organizational culture refers to the internal values, beliefs, and basic
assumptions that embody the heritage of the company and are manifest in the ways employees
feel about the company they are working for. Finally, corporate images are the views of the
organization developed by its external stakeholders.
5. Compare BAV with the CBBE Model:
There is a lot of commonality between the basic BAV model and the CBBE framework, as the
five pillars that make up the foundation of BAV model related aspects to the CCBE model.
BAV CBBE
Differentiation Superiority
Relevance Consideration
Energy Judgment
Esteem Credibility
Knowledge Resonance
Brand awareness and familiarity are handled differently in the two approaches. But in the
hierarchy they come different in these two models In CBBE model awareness is a necessary first
step in building brand equity but in BAV model familiarity sees it as the last step in building
brand equity but it treats it in a more affective manner- almost in a warm feeling or friendship
sense.

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