will.i.am and Lexus Play Music with Lasers and Cars

Wow, do Luxury automakers have some serious marketing budgets. Case in point, to promote their new NX SUV, Lexus enlisted Grammy-winning rapper will.i.am to pull off a crazy stunt on an airfield outside Madrid that took more than 65 people and over a week to produce.

What took so long and needed so many people to create? In the 3-and-a-half minute video chronicling the production, will.i.am explains that his mission was to take a tablet-based musical video game and place it in the real world with the a series of NX’s as the moving pieces. The way it works is that three of the SUVs take to the runway at night and have to essentially dance and weave around, rolling over “targets” on the asphalt created by more than 350 lasers. If the NXs all hit their marks at just the right time in just the right order, the “game” would play #thatPOWER, one the singer’s biggest hits. As will.i.am explains, “Instead of your finger tapping, a car is activating the lights and the notes.”

Watching them pull it off is pretty intense, but I have to say that while the stunt was crazy inventive, at the end of watching the video I was more interested in downloading the song than test driving the car.