On 9 September, the Roads and Transport Authority’s (RTA) Dubai Metro turned 15 years old. To celebrate this, the city has witnessed several activations with brands in the UAE, one of which went above and beyond to transform the Mall of the Emirates metro stop into a LEGO escape titled ‘Imagination Station.’
The activation included a limited-edition RTA metro Nol card, yellow LEGO brick flooring along the compartment of a train and other tailor-made LEGO metro features.
Campaign Middle East spoke with Urszula Bieganska, Head of Marketing, LEGO Middle East for an exclusive look into the insights that spurred the activation.
“The collaboration between LEGO Middle East and Dubai Metro has been driven by a natural alignment between both brands’ focus on imagination and innovation,” said Bieganska. She explained that the brand wanted to bring playful elements, akin to a child’s birthday party, to commuters using the public mode of transport.
“We saw an opportunity to connect our core values of creativity and play with the transformative impact the Metro has had on the city,” Bieganska said.
Another common factor the brand found, which made its activation with RTA’s metro unquestionably essential, is the parallel of achieving greatness through imagination and ambition.
“We wanted to bring this parallel to life, inviting the community to see the metro not only as a mode of transportation but as a symbol of creative vision, much like how LEGO play encourages people to imagine and build the world around them,” Bieganska added.
The activation has left no stone unturned with a keen attention to detail to capture the essence of LEGO and integrate it seamlessly into the Mall of the Emirates metro station.
“The station has become more than just a transit hub—it’s an immersive, playful experience that reinforces the values of both the LEGO brand and Dubai Metro,” said Bieganska.
The brand also wanted to create an activation that resonated with the community of Dubai, adding to its brand value and fostering a positive-association with as many people as possible.
“By associating our brand with a milestone event like the 15th anniversary of the metro, we were able to connect with our audience as a brand that celebrates imagination, progress, and community, much like the metro itself,” said Bieganska.
The effort to create a ‘visually engaging environment’ did not go unnoticed by commuters and commenters on social media, with reactions being ‘overwhelmingly positive’ across the board.
Comments left on LEGO Middle East and RTA’s collaborative posts highlighting the collaboration can see users saying ‘I’m trying my best to catch this train,’ with others saying the activation is a ‘great way to get residents and others to hop on for a ride.’
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LEGO confirmed these sentiments and said the activation resulted in considerable user-generated content, with many passers-by posting their own captures of the ‘Imagination Station.’
Furthermore, Bieganska said, “In terms of hard metrics, some of the media entities posted the content on their channels, which delivered above 6 million views with thousands of shares and comments.”
With regards to ROI, LEGO said its main objective was to ‘celebrate the imagination and creativity that RTA embarked on 15 years ago.’ It has also aimed to bring the ‘notion of play to people’s everyday lives.’
That being said, Bieganska added, “Needless to say, bringing the brand top of mind will have a long term and indirect impact on sales, which is not something that we [can] easily measure.”
In terms of the activation’s challenges, Bieganska said the only concern was to safely carry out the elements of the activation. “Perhaps the biggest was to safely install a minifigure on one of the seats in the train. On that note, I would like to thank our amazing partner agencies v4good and ATWE for their hard work from concept development to execution,” she said.
The activation will run until the end of September, so if you haven’t had the chance to witness the LEGO metro activation first-hand, make sure to head to the ‘Imagination Station’ at the Mall of the Emirates metro stop.
