THE MAKING OF
THE 5 -GAZILLION STAR HOTEL
JAY CHIAT AWARDS 2016
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A SMALL HOTEL WITH DREAMS OF GRANDEUR
This is the story of LEGOLAND Florida Resort’s journey to become a must-visit
attraction in Orlando: theme park capital of the world.
In the spring of 2015, we planned to launch a brand new hotel – an addition that
would elevate their status from theme park to resort, and would make the new
LEGOLAND Florida Resort a compelling vacation destination.
But themed resorts are a dime a dozen in Orlando, and we had to make sure the
hotel felt different. By this time, we had also built a robust park strategy to help
LEGOLAND Florida Resort become the first theme park truly built for kids to take
the lead. The hotel too would have to embody this spirit, but we needed a fresh way
to get the message across.
We were tasked not only with branding and launching the hotel, but also with
getting every single room sold for the opening weekend – no small ask for a hotel
nobody had heard of yet. We spent months thinking, researching, and embracing
our inner child.
The result? The world’s first “5-Gazillion Star Hotel.” A magical place where all the
perks were designed for kids, and LEGO characters played the roles of hotel staff.
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LAY OF THE (LEGO)LAND
lodging survey: last trip to florida
For parents planning their next theme park vacation, “where should
we stay?” is often a big cause of debate. When it came to Orlando,
nearly half preferred staying in a theme park accomodation. This was
obviously a big opportunity for LEGOLAND Florida Resort to grow its
footprint.
But themed hotels in Orlando were almost as common at theme
parks. We needed to launch with a unique proposition that would set
LEGOLAND Florida Resort apart.
*Total Respondents: n= 225 per market
Total who stayed overnight: n=341
Orlando vacationers =83
Out of state vacationers = 243
Source: Directions Research: LLF Brand Awareness & Ad Tracker May 2016
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THE LEGO MOVIE & OUR
LIGHTBULB MOMENT
The LEGO movie had been a huge success, the ensuing enthusiasm
for LEGO led to an extremely successful year for LEGOLAND Florida
Resort. It also helped us realize something about kids.
Kids love characters. Yes, LEGO had always been a popular toy, but
there was a special kind of fascination around Emmet and his friends
that got kids obsessed with LEGO.
This revelation happened early in our days working on the brand,
but we had never quite found the perfect time or reason to bring
LEGOLAND Florida’s caharcters into the limelight. The launch of the
LEGOLAND hotel would be our moment.
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THE ASSIGNMENT
Our official task was to
create a fresh and fun
campaign idea to launch the
LEGOLAND Florida Resort.
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KEY OBJECTIVES
1. BRING TO LIFE LEGOLAND FLORIDA RESORT’S BRAND
PROMISE: ‘BUILT FOR KIDS TO TAKE THE LEAD’
2. DRIVE 90% OCCUPANCY FOR OPENING WEEKEND
3. MAKE THE EXPERIENCE WORTH TALKING ABOUT
& SUSTAIN MOMENTUM
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CHALLENGE
The hotel itself was already being designed for kids in every way imaginable. LEGO
moats, whoopee cushions, treasure hunts in every room, and LEGO building classes
would all come with the resort package. But–short of telling every potential visitor
about these awesome yet small perks–we would need a way to package it all.
We also needed a way to bring our characters to the forefront if we were going to get
kidst tugging at their parents’ shirt tails about our hotel. At the time, these characters
were largely unknown and only some of them had names; they had not seen nearly
enough love and attention from the brand for kids to care.
To top it all off, we had to confront the physical reality that the LEGOLAND Florida
Resort would be located 50 miles away from downtown Orlando (and 50 miles away
from all our competition), in the small town of Winter Haven, FL.
Struggling under the weight of these disparate problems, we narrowed our focus. If we
could turn the LEGOLAND Florida Resort hotel into every kid’s dream hotel, we could
solve for most – if not all – of these challenges.
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INSIGHT: THINKING LIKE A KID
With steely determination and a tightly knit creative & strategy team, we began to
observe the little visitors we had to win over: our nieces and nephews, friends’ kids, and
strangers’ kids.
Slowly, we began to notice that when kids aren’t acting under grown-up rules, they
make them up anyway. Over and over again, kids of all ages would mimic the adult
world they saw around them. It was how they learned. But as soon as this thought began
to crystalize, we also realized that most kids never quite get it right; more often than
not, they create a weird and wonderful funhouse-mirror version of real life.
Seeing the world though their eyes acted like a light switching on in a dark room for us.
Because hotels were expressions of adult life. From a kid’s perspective, hotels must be
seem like strange experiences that are both endlessly exciting and yet enigmatic and
incomplete, because they could never experience all the perks adults could.
So what if we envisioned the most amazing hotel ever–like a kid would?
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STRATEGY
CREATE THE
WORLD’S FIRST
FIVE STAR HOTEL
FOR KIDS
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FIVE STAR HOTEL FOR KIDS
We challenged our creative teams to imagine what a 5-star hotel designed for
kids would look like. What would it sound like? What aspects of a real hotel
would a kid preserve through osmosing the grown up world she lives in, and
what aspects would she bend to fit a whimsical fantasy?
We decided right away that a “5-star hotel” sounded way too boring for a kid.
But what about a million-star hotel? A billion-trillion star hotel? No, wait, a
5-GAZILLION STAR hotel. That sounded right. It sounded awesome, in fact. But
if we were kids again, we would want to be running this magical hotel ourselves.
And we would probably make all the LEGOs do the hard work.
So we did just that.
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INTRODUCING THE 5-GAZILLION STAR HOTEL
There were a lot of hotels out there, but before
May 15 2015, 0 of them were for kids. So we decided
to do something about that.
In May 2015, we opened the doors to the 5-Gazillion
Star Hotel at the LEGOLAND Florida Resort.
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A PLACE WHERE KIDS RULE
As we prepared for the grand opening, we decided to announce that
the LEGOLAND Florida Resort had its very own kid-CEO, Tommy
Parker. Tommy would be the precocious face of the new LEGOLAND
Florida hotel, fully attuned to the needs and wants of his guest-peers
(like juice breaks).
He became the voice through which we would create and rationalize
adult perks reimaged through our funhouse-mirror glasses, like the
LEGOLAND Times newspaper (Tommy made the first issue).
Leveraging our Tommy lens, we launched 2 new permenant services
to the hotel: a monthly newspaper delivered to every room, and a
turndown service that would assure kids the room had been cleared
of all ghouls and scary things.
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AND LEGO CHARACTERS BECOME REGULARS
And, after exploring several new creation myths and origin stories for our
nameless LEGO characters, our creative team found a simpler solution:
they were to become our new hotel staff.
We captured imaginations in the backseats of cars with custom billboards
introducing LEGO staff so kids would know who was who when they
arrived.
Distracted parents were prompted by Captain Brickbeard to them book the
best possible experience on our site and across display banners. In each
banner frame, Brickbeard would talk about his duties as the hotel’s oneeyed chef.
Our staff even made an appearance in Tommy Parker’s tour of the hotel
that we aired on regional television and as part of an online campain to
introduce the faces of our hotel.
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THE RESULTS BLEW US OUT OF
THE THEME PARK
2X
15%
131.6%
2 months
100%
37%
awareness of the hotel
doubled in the three
months of the campaign
(April-July 2015)
of projected revenue
earned
of rooms sold out prior
to opening weekend
Source: LLF 2015 Brand Retrospective
Directions Research: LLF Brand & Ad Awareness Tracker, Spring 2015
increase in interest
around visiting the park
into FY15, we hit our
yearly projected revenue
goal.
of total rooms for FY15
room nights were booked
prior to opening day
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AND THE MEDIA CAUGHT WIND OF OUR EFFORTS
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THANK
YOU!
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