Greenpeace's grim cover of "The Lego Movie" theme song "Everything Is Awesome" and its equally bleak music video has led to Lego ending its partnership with Shell.
Lego will not renew its present 2011 contract with the oil company and end a partnership that began in the 1960s. Shell sells the brick-building toy sets at their gas stations across 26 countries in a deal valued at £68 million (more than $110 million), according to The Guardian.
"We want to clarify that as things currently stand we will not renew the co-promotion contract with Shell when the present contract ends," Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO of the LEGO Group, said in a statement.
The Lego brand will not support Greenpeace in any further campaigns against the Shell company. The Danish toy makers believe the environmental organization should target Shell directly with their complaints about the oil company's practices.
"The Greenpeace campaign focuses on how Shell operates in a specific part of the world. We firmly believe that this matter must be handled between Shell and Greenpeace," Knudstop said in July. "We are saddened when the LEGO brand is used as a tool in any dispute between organizations."
Greenpeace used Legos in two stop-motion video campaigns to pressure Lego break its partnership with Shell. The "LEGO: Everything is NOT awesome" showed a beautiful Arctic landscape build out of Legos until a black oily sludge seeped out of an oil rig and covered the land, animals and people. Only the Shell flag remained above the oil slick. The video garnered nearly 6 million views on YouTube.
The Royal Dutch Shell company put oil drilling plans in the artic on hold for this summer. The company did submit a new offshore drilling plan to the United States to explore for oil of the coast of northwest Alaska next year, according to The Guardian.
Greenpeace hopes Lego's decision to end its Shell partnership will convince other organization to follow suit. The Science Museum in London currently has a climate change exhibit sponsored by Shell.
"Clearly Shell is trying to piggy back on the credibility of other brands. It's a good PR strategy if you can get away with it," John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, told The Guardian. "But as we've show, if you can't get away with it, that social license is taken away. It does damage them a lot."
