With the immense popularity of SUVs, most in the auto industry believe sport sedans to be a lost cause. But for the engineers at Lexus, the sport sedan is an obsession. So our challenge was to create excitement about the new IS among millennials. To do this, we decided to play to one of their greatest obsessions–gaming. And there is no better space to reach millennial gamers than Twitch. But here’s the massive problem: Twitch users share an absolute HATRED for advertising. So how do you endear this extraordinarily obsessive and diverse audience to your brand? Instead of talking at them, you engage them with something extraordinarily valuable.

To drive excitement about the new IS among millennial gamers, our idea was to tap into one of their greatest obsessions–their gaming space. Gamers are known for spending a massive amount of money and time designing the perfect environment to play, From carefully choosing and arranging Nanoleaf LEDs and Funko Pop collectibles, to sweating over the type of chair, monitor and soundcard to use. So our idea was to invite the Twitch community to help craft the perfect gaming environment in a space where it had never been done before–the sport sedan. Because we believed that by engaging millennials to help transform a Lexus IS into the ultimate mobile gaming space, we could endear them to the sport sedan in a way a 30-second commercial never could.

Gamers are extraordinarily obsessive. Not just about the games they play but the environment they play in. Lexus engineers also have a big obsession–the sport sedan. In fact, Lexus recently carved a racetrack out of the side of a mountain in Japan just so their engineers could better hone the performance of their sport sedans. So we wanted to use the power of obsession to get gamers excited about the Lexus IS and create something that would stoke their passion. And naturally, we wanted to do this where they hang the most–Twitch. But here’s the problem: Twitch users HATE commercials. So we knew we had to create something that would engage them instead of speak at them.

We partnered with Twitch to work with one of their biggest livestreamers, Fuslie. Fuslie conducted a livestream where she told her community they were going to build the ultimate mobile gaming space, The Gamers’ IS. She then invited viewers to vote on a dozen different customizations. Including the exterior wrap theme, style and arrangement of interior RGBs, and a gaming CPU mounted in a trunk adorned with lasers and smoke. They could even vote on the energy drinks for the center-console fridge. And because gamers prefer darkness, smart tint would automatically shut out all light when the gaming began. Once the voting ended, we went off and customized the IS, faithfully bringing their vision to life. Then Fuslie held a second livestream where she introduced the completed Gamers’ IS, showing off all the features her community chose. Something her fans declared to be “pog” over 200 times in the chat.

The two-livestream event earned over 4.8 million views, over 57 million impressions, and more than 60K chat messages. Including these gems – mrbwub: WOW POG, devintheawesome214: THE CARS

SICKKKKKKKK, aliooooodavinci: Elon Music would be jaleous [sic]. In fact, engagement actually grew during the second hour of the reveal livestream. The event was picked up by Hypebeast, CNET, BallerStatus, Car and Driver and Ad Age. Gamers’ IS contributed to a 198% spike in IS sales. And the CEO of Twitch said our initiative was “a great example of how a brand can participate–and do it at scale–on Twitch.”