LEGO is one of Big in Japan’s most important social media clients.  This 75 year-old toy maker is a great example of a company that has used social media to re-invent their business.  Bill Tompson gave a great presentation at WOMBAT3 titled, "LEGO: Using Blogs to Speak With - Not At - Your Customers.  Josh Hallett blogged about the presentation in a post of the same title.  He explains,

They have an extraordinary community. LEGO fans make Star Trek fans look like lightweights. Recently LEGO embarked on a program to update the Mindstorms product. They asked their fans what they wanted and listened. The conversation loop is an ongoing process. They ask, listen, prioritize and respond, then start again. With tools like surveys, forums, blogs and profiling they learn about their customers. With their platform they can quickly gather feedback from customers on a variety of topics. Not only do the validate certain programs they also rate/rank them. Not only can they look at overall data, the can look across segments.

[photo credit: Josh Hallett of Hyku ~ our favorite social media guru]