In China, the first big marketing opportunity after the Chinese New Year (CNY) is Valentine’s Day. Despite the importance of the day being somewhat diluted by other similar dates like the “I Love You Day” in May and Qixi in August, for Chinese consumers and marketers, Valentine’s Day still holds a similar weight to Christmas. That is why between 8 and 14 February, Danish construction toymaker LEGO brought a flower shop to Chengdu Taikoo Li.
Located at the Majiaxiang Temple within the Taikoo Li compound, the first part of the “flower shop” is in fact an outdoor pop-up flower market cart with a LEGO sculpture of Robert Indiana’s iconic “Love”. Decorated mostly with LEGO flowers, the cart shows off the brand’s latest Botanicals collection. Meanwhile, the second part of the campaign is indoors at the LEGO flagship store. Decorated with LEGO flowers in pots and vases, the store has been reimagined into a flower shop. Between 8 and 9 February, construction events featuring the Botanicals collection were held for children and adults alike, under the instruction of Hou Weiwei the “florist”, a certified LEGO master builder.
Just at the beginning of this year, ahead of CNY, LEGO brought its Botanicals collection to MOSTown in Hong Kong with a pop-up “sea of flowers”, along with a 2-metre tall lucky cat installation, and a “lucky cabin”. This was built by another certified master builder, Andy Hung.
LEGO hosted a “temple fair” in Shanghai last month for CNY, a year after a similar pop-up in Beijing. The choice of city for the flower shop might have benefitted the original panda and bamboo decoration of the Chengdu flagship. This also came from a high-profile Pharrell Williams collaboration last year. It would seem that LEGO is glocalising its campaigns in China, fusing both its global product lines, international special occasions and local cultural ethos with its latest Botanicals campaign.
