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Participants add LEGO bricks to a LEGO representation of the WasteExpo 2024 logo in May at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
“We were looking for something that we could offer our attendees that is interactive and gets them engaged and just is fun,” Informa Markets’ Christina Sanchez said about WasteExpo 2024, held May 6-9 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. For Sanchez, who serves as Informa Market’s group marketing manager for WasteExpo, a yearly trade show that focuses on solid waste, recycling, organics, food waste recovery, and sustainability in North America, the search culminated in a construction toy usually associated with children: LEGO bricks.
Christina Sanchez
The idea? A LEGO wall in the lobby of the convention center where participants could help assemble the WasteExpo logo, choosing from among 18,000 tiny LEGO bricks sourced by experiential event agency 3D Media Group. Sanchez, who also manages marketing for Waste360 — Informa’s information, event, commerce and education provider to the solid waste, recycling, organics and sustainable communities — and WWETT (Water & Wastewater Equipment, Treatment & Transport Show), worked with an in-house designer to design the dimensions and look of the LEGO-built WasteExpo logo.
“It was just a really good opportunity to converse with the attendees,” Sanchez said. “We also created with 3D Media a mobile engagement scavenger hunt associated with it. It was a way to be able to get our attendees to walk around different parts of the exhibit hall floor and also try to interact with us for more than one day. We raffled off a gift card afterwards if they answered all the questions correctly.”
One of the four questions participants had to answer correctly on the scavenger hunt had to do with the LEGO wall — participants were instructed to “find where the LEGO wall was located and speak to the host who was helping put the LEGO wall design together and ask them a question about how many LEGO pieces are on the LEGO wall. There were four multiple-choice options and they had to ask him to get the right answer. That was one way to be able to engage people and get them involved — not just walking through the exhibit hall and looking at the different displays and speaking to the exhibitors but doing things outside of what an exhibit hall normally entails.”
In addition to engaging attendees, the LEGO wall was used as an opportunity to promote different aspects of the show. “It said, for example, stop by booth 1006, which was the Waste 360 WasteExpo show booth in the exhibit hall, and let them know what they could get there,” Sanchez said. “They could find out more about the history of WasteExpo, which is in its 58th year.”
After the event, the LEGO wall was taken apart and all 18,000 pieces were donated to Pass the Bricks, a nonprofit organization that repurposes LEGO sets for children in need.
Geography Lesson
While Sanchez was pleased with the engagement the LEGO wall generated, she said the lesson she learned was that the lobby probably wasn’t the best place for it. “I probably would have put the LEGO wall in the booth or somewhere else in the exhibit hall because at the very front of the show, when you walk into the Las Vegas Convention Center, it’s a very large lobby,” she said, and there was a lot competing for their attention — including an antique trash truck on display. “There were a lot of other things going on, I think, so it might’ve not gotten as much attention as it could have gotten if it was in a place where there was a lot more constant traffic walking by it.”
A Larger Purpose
Being that WasteExpo is about, well, waste, it was important to Sanchez that the LEGO bricks would have another life beyond the trade show. “We had no need to keep these LEGO bricks afterwards,” she said. Other events that have featured a LEGO wall have shipped it to a headquarters office as a permanent display. “We work remotely for the most part, so we really didn’t have a need to ship this anywhere,” she said. So the solution she “felt really good about, for sustainability purposes,“ was to partner with Pass the Bricks, a nonprofit organization that “designs LEGO sets for children in need.”
WasteExpo staff took the LEGO wall apart, “piece by piece” and put all 18,000 blocks in boxes, she said. Pass the Bricks works with the local St. Jude’s Ranch for Children, which provides a safe home for children who have been abused or neglected, Sanchez said. Pass the Bricks came and picked up all the LEGO bricks and sanitized them, “designed new sets with them and distributed them to the children. That was my favorite part of it,” she said. “It was a really good thing to do for the local community.”
Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.