“This necessitated a certain degree of agility and flexibility to swiftly adapt to the new circumstances”

GCB FutureTalks #15 with Andrea Faflíková, Director for PR, Communications and Events at the LEGO Group for the REEMEA region

19.08.2020

Matthias Schultze spoke with Andrea Faflíková about the business event culture at LEGO company as well as her key learnings from the recent months. Andrea Faflíková is LEGO company´s responsible Director for PR, Communications and Events in Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Matthias Schultze: The LEGO brand stands for creativity, inspiration and imagination, among other things. How does that translate into the company’s business events?

Andrea Faflíková: Naturally, when organizing LEGO events, we stay true to our company values – imagination, creativity, fun, learning, care, quality – and reflect them in everything we do. We are here to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow, and this is what we want to do with any target group with which we engage. I believe that that this approach is highly relevant when it comes to organizing LEGO events.

Matthias Schultze: What is your experience with digital or hybrid events? What do you think are these new formats’ strengths and challenges, especially for the customer journey?

Andrea Faflíková: In regard to bigger sized events and their frequency, it is a fairly new experience. Facing the new reality, we made rapid progress and quickly adapted to new ways of working. We shifted the majority of both our internal and external events into the digital or virtual environment. Personally, I am grateful for this learning process as I look at it as a great opportunity for personal development for all people involved. Indeed, this necessitated a certain degree of agility and flexibility from all the involved teams to swiftly adapt to the new circumstances.

The new format’s indisputable strengths are the possibilities to connect a large number of participants at once and to flawlessly mix diverse elements together – speakers, their presentations, guests from all around the world, jingles and videos – to save time and costs for travelling and other, similar arrangements. On the other hand, despite implementing engagement activities and involving the teams both before and during the event, the absence of personal contact - that we have become used to in face-to-face formats - has proven to be a certain challenge for some participants.

Matthias Schultze: The last months were marked by big changes. What was your most positive professional experience during this time?

Andrea Faflíková: In a nutshell: “What does not kill us, makes us stronger.” Or in other words: “In every crisis, look for new opportunities.” And this is exactly what we did.

For example, we moved our biggest regional conference for LEGO employees from a face-to-face format to a virtual one in just five weeks. Naturally, this was a big learning moment and a fantastic work experience thanks to our event agency and their technical solution partner. It was great to see how this virtual event was positively received among our employees.

If we had not faced this unprecedented situation in such a manner, we would not have been able to move this fast into the field of digital and hybrid events.

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