Lego Blames Greenpeace Protests and Will Not Renew Co-Marketing Contract With Shell
Note: Greenpeace ran an aggressive campaign criticizing Lego for teaming up to promote oil-giant Shell Corporation. The campaign included a video, “Everything Is Awesome,” that went viral, especially after it was removed from YouTube at Warner Brothers request. And, then, after complaints about its removal the Greenpeace video was put back on YouTube. – KZ
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Children are our major concern and the central focus of our company. We are determined to leave a positive impact on society and the planet that children will inherit. Our unique contribution is through inspiring and developing children by delivering creative play experiences all over the world.
A co-promotion like the one with Shell is one of many ways we are able to bring LEGO bricks into the hands of more children and deliver on our promise of creative play.
The Greenpeace campaign uses the LEGO brand to target Shell. As we have stated before, we firmly believe Greenpeace ought to have a direct conversation with Shell.The LEGO brand, and everyone who enjoys creative play, should never have become part of Greenpeace’s dispute with Shell.
Our stakeholders have high expectations to the way we operate. So do we. We do not agree with the tactics used by Greenpeace that may have created misunderstandings among our stakeholders about the way we operate; and we want to ensure that our attention is not diverted from our commitment to delivering creative and inspiring play experiences.
The long-term co-promotion contract we entered with Shell in 2011 delivers on the objective of bringing LEGO bricks into the hands of many children, and we will honour it – as we would with any contract we enter.
We continuously consider many different ways of how to deliver on our promise of bringing creative play to more children. We want to clarify that as things currently stand we will not renew the co-promotion contract with Shell when the present contract ends.
We do not want to be part of Greenpeace’s campaign and we will not comment any further on the campaign. We will continue to deliver creative and inspiring LEGO play experiences to children all over the world.
Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, President and Chief Executive Officer of the LEGO Group.