Legos Aren't Just For Boys Anymore - Building Gender Balanced Business

“The last time I was in a Lego store, there was this little pink ghetto over in one corner. And I thought, really? This is the best you can do?”— Peggy Orenstein, author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter

To understand how to make the product better appeal to girls, Lego sent designers and sales strategists out into the field to shadow girls in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Korea. They learned that girls approach the toys differently.

• Legos weren’t meeting girls’ aesthetic requirements; they prefer a pleasing sense of order, friendlier colors, and more detail
• While boys build quickly in a linear fashion, girls like to stop and make time for rearranging and storytelling
• Boys play with their Lego men in third person, but girls wanted a figure that they could identify with

“We had nine nationalities on the team to make certain the underlying experience would work in many cultures.” — Nanna Ulrich Gudum, senior creative director

Lego Friends (which includes 23 different products) offers the traditional Lego advantage of helping to develop spatial, mathematical, and motor skills through independent play while also meeting needs specific to girls. Lego Friends offerings include:

• 29 mini-doll figures, which are taller and curvier than the standard Lego man
• 5 main characters that have names and back stories
• 6 new Lego colors, including lavender and azure
• A new Lego town, Heartlake City, which features a horse academy, veterinary clinic, cafe, and salon

“If it takes color-coding or ponies and hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains.” — Neuroscientist Lise Eliot

Read the complete Businessweek article here