What is this unrecognizable LEGO pattern trying to express?

It’s obviously the table of chemical elements but I find the look much too constructed and the idea much too obscure. I just happen to remember my chemistry lessons.

Just what does chemistry have to do with a child’s imagination or even level of knowledge?

A periodic table, eh? Wow, glad you told us, I wouldn’t have gotten it. So how many Lego-loving kids are familiar with the periodic table? Seems like something aimed at winning awards rather than upping business…

Cryptic? Definitely. Though a lot depends on where it’s being used. If it’s used in a scientific magazine or something, then it’s spot on because that audience will recognize that much more easily than say, someone who sees that on the side of a bus or something.

Right on, Peter! Not only advertisers but your average joe should go: Wow!

The table of chemical elements? Oh jeez, that was hard …

i must have blacked out through that part of science class.. because that took way too long

I am in advertising/marketing and unfortunately have to agree with Peter on this. So many companies use an ad to attempt to win the next big award and forget the most important element of advertising – Reach the consumer and sell product. How are you going to do that when the target audience is 5-16 children and 30-40 year old males?

Awards are nice and they do bring in more clients but eventually the clients will smarten up and turn to marketers that base advertising on the tracking metrics behind the scenes and not the shiny plaque on the wall.

http://www.metoa.com/Blog

I had no problem recognizing the Periodic Table of Elements, but the metaphor interpretation did come more slowly.

I absolutely agree with the comment above about “award-winning design aimed at designers.” It’s definitely something that’s been coming up a lot during crits during class.

This is so abstract and ridiculous.

NoMeansNo.

Thank god there are people smarter than me to be able to tell mw what the hell this Lego thing is suppose to be.

And aren’t Lego’s really marketed for children? Name a 5-12 year old that’s going to be able to tell you what that’s suppose to be without making this into a Rorschach test.

Bring back the Dinosaur Lego ad!

im pretty sure this ad is targeted towards the parents rather than the kids.

My 16-year-old son just walked in and said, “Cool. Periodic Table of Elements.” I told him about the controversy on the site about whether this communicates anything. As a future designer and art major, he said, “we’ve all been ‘owned’” Must be another MySpace term that I’m not supposed to understand!

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This is very cool. And I say that as a scientist, which I think is the point. Lego has an especially iconic status in the scientific and engineering circles, so I bet for folks like me (parents of two, who also happen to teach science, etc), this really really hits the mark.

This is brilliant and I do believe that every other science geek/nerd will agree with me on this point.

i would love to run this in MAKE magazine! (i’m senior editor).

I think this ad campaign is great because it’s smart and it has an idea which works for me!

The tagline and the concept works very well together.

With the atoms, as defined on a table of elements, we can build everything and with Lego we can model everything, just for the “average” people out there.

But I can see how people can find it hard to understand and even “cryptic” but that’s the fault of the fast-consuming-ad-imagery which I found pretty depressing, as Kevin W. Parker said previously, and stupid, because fortunetely the consumers are smarter than the average of what the advertisers might think I believe.

I think bm is wrong: no wonder MarLyn’s son did recognize it instantly.

Being worked for an ad agency myself, I believe agencies shouldn’t create and support “smart” ads not exclusively to get some stupid prizes at Cannes but because it’s simply exciting, captivating, fascinating, etc…

Hope I wasn’t too offensive, and if I were I’m sorry, that wasn’t my point.

Has it occurred to you folks who are disparaging this ad that maybe you’re the oddballs? There’s a periodic table hanging in almost every school in the country. It takes a special combination of ignorance and arrogance to both miss the reference and then argue that almost everyone else will miss it, too.

Sheeh, come on people! This ad is brilliant. Any educated person should know the periodic table of elements. And any educated person shouldn’t be afraid of having to think to “get” something.

Asking “would people who get this ad actually BUY Lego?” is kind of silly – there’s a little product from Lego called “Mindstorms” that would go to this same mindset.

Oh, yes – said product is about $200 a pop.

The ad *has* a target audience, willing to spend more money than usual on Lego. (And if you get the “quirky, smart kid” audience as well, so much the better.)

I was looking for a oeriodic table and clicked on this for info but its lego. now that sucks