One of our favorite clients, LEGO, keystone toy the ‘Brick’ turns 50 today!  What a legacy.  Two weeks ago several LEGO employees came to Dallas to check on our progress and to give us a sneak peek into LEGO.  Their corporate overview had some fascinating information, including today’s anniversary of the Lego Brick.  Of course, Gizmodo scooped me on this one ~ way to go guys!  Here are some fun facts (via Gizmodo):

LEGO brick curiosities

• There are about 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world’s 6 billion inhabitants
• Children around the world spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.
• More than 400 million people around the world have played with LEGO bricks.
• LEGO bricks are available in 53 different colors.
• 19 billion LEGO elements are produced every year.
• 2.16 million LEGO elements are molded every hour, or 36,000 per minute.
• More than 400 billion LEGO bricks have been produced since 1949.
• Two eight-stud LEGO bricks of the same color can be combined in 24 different ways
• Three eight-stud bricks can be combined in 1,060 ways.
• There are more than 915 million combinations possible for six 2 x 4 LEGO bricks of the same color
• 7 LEGO sets are sold by retailers every second around the world.
• The LEGO bricks sold in one year would circle the world 5 times.
• 40 billion LEGO bricks stacked on top of one another would connect the earth with the moon.
• LEGO bricks are so much more than just toys. They are used in classrooms from preschool to university level to teach everything from math, language skills and science to engineering and technology principles.
• The LEGO brick has inspired generations of innovators, like Jonathan Gay, inventor of Flash.
• World-renowned author Douglas Coupland believes the LEGO brick represents a “language in itself.”
• A January 2008 Google search produces 57.6 million references to LEGO bricks.
• There are 55,600 LEGO videos on YouTube.
• Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, used LEGO bricks to build the external low-cost and expandable casing for ten 4GB hard disks when they were busy developing the Google search engine (today, they have reportedly been used in Google’s college graduate recruiting exercises to test potential candidate’s creative horsepower.)

Thanks LEGO!!!

Just a quick programming note here at Big in Japan.  Jake McKee has been with the company as Lead Samurai for almost a year.  He has been deeply involved with almost every project since joining Big in Japan and has made a huge impact on our business.  Starting this week, Jake’s role within Big in Japan will be significantly scaled back allowing him to focus on his own speaking and writing efforts outside of the company.  Jake will continue his work managing and supporting both the LEGO and TechData accounts for Big in Japan.  Scott Bauer will take over his role with our other clients.  We wish Jake the best of luck on his book and encourage anyone looking for a great speaker to give him a call!

The Big in Japan team was out in force at the World Series of Video Games at the Gaylord Texan.  Our involvement with gaming really started this year with our work with the LEGO MMOG (massively multiplayer online game).  It took us a while to figure out the how social communication and gaming could intersect, but very quickly it clicked.  Since then we have really ‘amp’d-up’ our involvement in the gaming arena.  If you are in the Dallas area we recommend stopping by the WSVG if you get a chance.  Check out the photos from the Flickr Stream or see a few below:

Earlier this week my son (Ethan) came to our offices to hang out.  He knew we did work for Lego and found a stack of unopened Lego sets under one of the desks.  We opened one of the boxes and he began building.  When he left we just left the Legos on the conference table.

I had always hoped that as the team here at Big in Japan grew the interaction between our people would result in great new ideas.  In reality we all get busy with projects and rarely have time to just ‘hang out’.  Yesterday I woke up and decided that I would work on the business, instead of in the business for the day.  Quickly I realized that I needed to engage the team directly in order to figure out what was ‘next’. 

I tried to get everyone engaged, but with PDAs, cell phones, interruptions, Twitter, email and computers just laying around everywhere it was almost impossible to get everyone’s attention at the same time.  One by one the team began ‘fiddling’ with the Lego parts on the table and our meeting shifted from a speech to a discussion.  Mike came up with a great idea.  Jake had a good point.  Scott added a bunch.  It was great.  The Legos provided the guys with a harmless distraction from their ‘personal technology’ devices.  It was still hard, my phone must have rang once every five minutes ~ I resisted the temptation to even look who was calling.  Perhaps this will become a regular thing: harmless distractions to increase engagement!

Anyway, thanks Ethan!  Great idea. . . 

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] 

Back in December, Big in Japan began a project with LEGO on their recently announced Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). The project was only revealed to the world a week ago, but has been in discussion, development, and planning for a long time.

LEGO has partnered with NetDevil to create the game, and Big in Japan is helping out with community management. You see, this game takes a different tact to most games. We’re helping LEGO to engage various enthusiast groups in the actual development of the game. It is a LEGO game, after all!

Details are still thin due to confidentiality issues, but if you’re interested in finding out more, or pitching in on the project sign up for updates at:

www.lego.com/mmog

More and more details are going to be revealed in the coming months, so stay tuned. From what I’ve seen of the early development, this is going to be one fantastic game.

(On a related side note, check out this hilarious fan-created comic)