On Lego, love and friendship

Human relations are a useful way to think about brands.

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There is a locked room in Lego's corporate museum, in Billund, Denmark, which is called the Vault. It is a large space, filled with shelves that are arranged in chronological order, starting in 1958 and stretching towards the present day. Between them, the shelves contain around 10,000 sets of Lego.

The Vault is used by the toymaker's designers as a source of inspiration, but its effect on first-time visitors is what makes the room remarkable. It's impossible not to seek out sets from your own childhood, not to be drawn back to an earlier version of yourself and, for lots of people, not to well up. We thought about having Kleenex as a sponsor, says Ms Signe Wiese, an in-house historian.

Visiting Lego's vault is a chance to experience the emotional power of a much-loved brand. Marketing experts have a whole taxonomy to describe the ties that bind consumers and brands. In a recent review of the literature, Dr Claudio Alvarez, Dr Meredith David and Dr Morris George of Baylor University identify five types of connection that have been the subject of concerted study.