• by Shankar Gupta , September 8, 2005

"The word LEGO is a brand name, and is very special to all of us in the LEGO group companies. We would sincerely like your help in keeping it special. Please always refer to our products as 'LEGO bricks or toys,' and not 'LEGOS.'"

This message, chiding users for incorrectly pluralizing the toy brick company's brand name, now greets all visitors who type the term "Legos.com" into their URL boxes.

While Lego isn't the only company to purchase domain names similar to their actual names--Google owns Googel.com and Goolge.com, for example--the message at the top of the page marks an uncommon strategy for protecting trade names.

Michael McNally, senior brand manager for Lego, said the company posted the message to defend its trademark, which could be in danger of going the way of Kleenex and Band-Aid--now universal names for whole product groups. "The message isn't designed to chastise anyone, or in a mass movement kind of way to change vernacular. We understand here that people refer to them as Legos," he said. "However, we do need to maintain our trademark and our rights, and certain words that we pay to have trademark for."

Ultimately, the company hopes to differentiate Lego from its building-block competitors, McNally said. "In general, I think that the spirit of it comes from the consumer confusion that can result when there are competitive products in the category," he said. "When all brick-type construction products are referred to as 'Legos,' it implies that any brick toy is a Lego, which they aren't."

But online marketing experts said they doubt Lego's strategy here will prove effective. "Lego's efforts are understandable from a legal and brand protection perspective, but trying to sandbag spoken variations of a core brand name is a bit like herding cats," said Pete Blackshaw, co-founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. "Globalization and multiculturalism will compound this problem, as brand names are often accented with a local flavor or tweak, whether we like it or not."

Blackshaw added that the company's stern message could compromise Lego's free-form image--after all, you can build just about anything with those little blocks. "The key for Lego is to encourage appropriate usage without sounding off-putting or contradicting their own 'put the pieces together however you want' equity," he said. "Lego is a brand that stands for creativity of expression, so they need to walk a fine line."

Marketing consultant Steve Rubel added that Lego.com could have instead redirected visitors to Legos.com to Lego.com instead, without the explanation and plea to drop the "S." "I think what it shows is a lot of companies are struggling to protect their brand on the Internet, where people can just call it whatever they want--but it's really hard to do," he said, adding: "I don't think it's going to stop. Why not just do a simple redirect?"

Regardless of Lego's campaign to get the "S" out of their common appellation, many sources still refer to the company and the toys as "LEGOS," and very few use the term "LEGO blocks." In the last 24 hours, articles about Hurricane Katrina in the Associated Press and USA Today both mention the toys, and refer to them as "Legos." Additionally, searches using Google Wednesday revealed that marketers who bid on keywords tend to bid on both "Lego" and "Legos."