Michael Moore’s expertise is taking the brick into the next century.
After 23 years at Lego UK, Michael Moore, the company’s head of
marketing, agrees he’ll ‘probably stick with it’. He’s seen Lego change
drastically over the years, and is preparing to launch a hi-tech version
of the plastic brick. Last week he and his colleagues appointed BMP DDB
to handle the combined pounds 7 million account of Lego and its theme
park, Legoland (Campaign, 18 October).
Such dedication might indicate a childhood obsession with Lego, but
Moore’s schoolboy passion was archaeology. However, a careers adviser
warned him that jobs in that field were thin on the ground, and
suggested that the skills and energy he was using to promote the school
archaeology society might be a good grounding for a career in marketing.
So Moore took up business studies at Norwich City College. Lego was his
first job after graduating. ‘I started out pompous as hell, thinking I’d
stay at Lego for two years and then move on,’ he admits. ‘But new jobs
kept coming up, and I stayed here because the variety has been
enormous.’
His first job at the company was as a management trainee in field sales
across London. ‘I was 21 years old with a Ford Cortina Estate and a
terrific branded product to sell,’ Moore says fondly. He spent two years
in the thick of things, dealing with customers ranging from the smart
toy store, Hamleys, to market traders in East Ham, before moving up to
the Lego headquarters in Wrexham as a management accountant.
After a year immersed in profit and loss accounts, Moore moved into
sales administration and then became a marketing assistant. His next
move was as a public relations manager, before he moved in 1982 to
become a brand manager. Seven years later Moore became marketing
manager, and head of marketing in 1991.
Moore’s own children, a son of five and a daughter of 11, are both Lego
enthusiasts. When they are not building houses and spaceships, the
family likes to go walking, or even revisit Moore’s past enthusiasms
with a trip to archaeological digs in nearby Chester.
