Customized Lego Kit Puts Spotlight on the Worlds Biggest Little Known Company
The Dutch maker of the world’s most sophisticated chip manufacturing machines gets a big surprise when it offers a special Lego version of its machines to employees.Click here for EEA sponsors; here to subscribe, and here for an RRN media kit.
Who would think that the Lego version of Eindhoven, NL-based ASML’s incredibly complex and sophisticated Twinscan Exe:5000 machine would have the same appeal as the iconic Hess toy truck? Certainly not the management at ASML when it special ordered a Lego kit representing its newest and most sophisticated machine and made it available to its employees on Dec. 1 for $228, according to an article in Vice.
ASML apparently underestimated the interest in the Lego version of the machine to the public. The kit reportedly was only meant to be available to its own employees but sold out like hot cakes, forcing ASML to cancel the orders.
The kit has 851 pieces and measures 13.86 by 3.9 by 2.52 inches when built. The actual machine weighs over 160 tons and reportedly requires an entire 747 freighter to ship. When the unauthorized orders started flowing in, ASML took down the product page, which did come with the disclaimer, “Maximum of one set per customer, multiple orders from one customer will be canceled.” A valid ASML email address is now required to order the product.
The Vice writer asks if ASML is missing the same type of marketing attention from which the Hess brand has benefited for years. “Making sure there are enough Lego models for employees first and foremost makes sense,” writes Matt Jancer of Vice. “We get that. Make sure the folks who toil away creating the chips in real life get the first crack at them. But how about a second run for the non-ASML-employed public? There’s clearly plenty of pent-up interest in it....Everything is advertising. Customer service is advertising, liberal return policies are advertising, and of course, merchandising is advertising. Computer chip manufacturing doesn’t exactly hold the same level of product visibility in modeling as race cars and fighter planes, so why not encourage that interest and rare bit of public recognition?”
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