Towards a monumental experience: Fandom and corporate imaginary within the LEGO inside tour

Abstract

Global car, fashion, and media brands invite enthusiasts to participate in corporate values through brand museums, visitor centers, and factory tours. Those guided tours offer a means to engage their fanbase with the product/service in a more interactive and immersive manner. This study has in its focus the LEGO Inside Tour as a branded assembled spatial story of experiential consumption. Rather than focusing on theme parks as a historically proven place-based engagements with the industry, this study embarks on a journey into a consumer experience via architectural, material and performative inside tour created by the LEGO Group as a corporate engagement strategy filled with commodified meanings of fandom and nostalgia. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork as a participant observer during the 3-day LEGO Inside Tour in Denmark, the author will discuss the externalization of LEGO brand values into meaningful spaces with symbols of LEGO corporate culture and nostalgia. Finally, the study offers a contextualization of a monumental experience in brand-related places and its role in the contemporary fandom.