ABSTRACT
Branding is an area of management that was born of symbols and artifacts. In most cases artifacts such as logos and names have been designed to symbolize the company in ways that transfer management's intended meanings or desired associations to external stakeholders. But as companies move toward corporate branding, they start to recognize that the brand plays an important symbolic role within the company as well. In this chapter we examine how brands live in the artifacts and symbols of the LEGO Company. By elaborating the corporate-branding model developed by Hatch and Schultz (2001), we show a variety of ways in which the company used its core artifacts—the brick and the formal statement of company values—and their associated meanings to implement their new corporate-brand strategy and integrate it with their stakeholder relationship building activities. We focus in particular on how employees make use of symbols and artifacts provided by LEGO management to transform the culture of the company.
