Lexus AI Emotional Journey
Client:
Lexus
Agency:
The&Partnership
Production:
UNIT9
Role:
Creative Director
Year:
2021
Lexus wanted to launch the ES Self-Charging Hybrid with a campaign as responsive as the car itself: a vehicle designed to sense and adapt to its driver.
The answer was an ad that did the same thing to its viewer.
The film used facial recognition technology to read the viewer's emotional state in real time: stressed, surprised, relaxed, puzzled, or happy. We then adapted the film accordingly.
Pace, colour, music, and montage all shifted dynamically based on what the viewer's face revealed. With multiple scan points along the storyline, the experience could generate up to 3,125 possible combinations.
At the end, each viewer received a personalised shareable video and a timeline visualisation showing how their emotions had guided the journey.
How was it made?
Reading the viewer in real time
The project required three distinct workstreams running simultaneously: the AI and facial recognition technology, the audiovisual content, and the psychological framework that connected the two.
The technology layer used MorphCast's SDK with a Deep Convolutional Neural Network to analyse emotion, age, gender, and head pose through the viewer's device camera.
The system had to be fast enough to feel instantaneous as any perceptible lag between expression and film response would break the experience entirely.
Building content that responds to science
The content layer couldn't be built independently of the psychology. A hand-picked panel of experts was brought in to develop and validate the audiovisual material: emotion-based design specialist Prof. Mohammad Soleymani, colour psychologist Prof. Dr. Axel Buether, and sonic expert Steve Keller, each a published researcher and TED speaker in their field.
Every colour choice, edit rhythm, and sound decision had to be rooted in how those stimuli actually affect human emotional states, not just how they appear to.
The result was a film that responded to the viewer the way the ES responds to its driver.
Zlaten del Castillo
Creative Director
London, UK
Brussels, Belgium
Available globally
All work shown with permission. All rights belong to the respective clients and production companies.