The Adult Fan of LEGO Communities and The LEGO Group's Corporate Control

Sharp, Logan

The Adult Fan of LEGO Communities and The LEGO Group's Corporate Control

Persistent URL

https://hdl.handle.net/10456/57622

Author(s)

Sharp, Logan

Date Issued

April 18, 2024

Abstract

The LEGO Group is known for its tremendous success within the toy industry, especially due to its collaboration with its Adult Fans of LEGO (AFOL) communities. These builder fan communities are not only consumers, but are the brand ambassadors who have expanded LEGO's vision and brought it into the twenty first century. I will examine the LEGO Ideas platform and a LEGO AFOL subreddit page to analyze the productive relations between LEGO and the AFOLs. Through applying Henry Jenkins's theorizing of participatory culture and seeing how fans of a specific commodity can be the biggest asset for a company like LEGO, this project delves into how the AFOL communities and the separation between voluntary fandom and corporatized fandom. Branding has created an economy of immaterial fan labor, where social rewards and recognition that are unavailable to users in other parts of their lives, are accessible in the AFOL community. For communication scholars, this research highlights the relationship between a brand and its consumers, presenting a participatory fandom and what can happen when a company starts to control and influence them. This helps to understand co-creation as a form of immaterial labor with fans to shape the identity and success of global brands like LEGO.

Major

Communication and Media

First Reader(s)

Sinha Roy, Ishita