Lexus has collaborated with artist Michael Murphy to create a piece of art to celebrate the brand's guest experience.
The work, made up of more than 2,000 thank you letters from customers and folded into origami, is hung in such a way that from one angle, a viewer will see the car company’s 2018 LS sedan — while from another, it takes the shape of the Lexus logo.
The 'Letters' art installation, an eight foot by 16 foot structure that’s suspended 13 feet off the ground, was made by Murphy with mobility in mind. Select corporate and dealer events across the country will feature the piece, inspired by a pledge that the carmaker calls the Lexus Covenant.
Cooper Ericksen, Lexus’ vice president of marketing, said: “The Lexus Covenant is what drives dealers and associates to treat customers as they would treat guests in their own home and to go to any lengths to serve them better."
Lexus has created a 60-second video that features guests reading their handwritten letters to dealerships as a Lexus craftsman carefully folds and hangs each one.
One reads, “It is with a very grateful heart that I write you about your amazing employees,” while another adds, “Eric volunteered to come to my rescue that evening as soon as Lexus closed” and “Brad met me personally in the service bay.” A mother concludes: “This may seem like a little thing, but to a mom, these things really matter. My three-year-old even noticed, and said, ‘He wanted to be sure we were really safe, didn’t he?’”
Murphy refers to his pieces as perceptual art because the main emphasis of the work is on the viewers’ perception.
“I took my ability to make things and combined it with my passion to create experiences for people and put them together,” said Murphy.
The project took hundreds of hours to complete, with the folding and hanging of each origami piece taking nearly 200 hours. “This is a very tight, precise craft,” added Murphy. “If it is more than one millimeter off it is considered an error.”
Ericksen added: “Lexus crafts experiences for its guests with the same level of care it crafts its vehicles. Using actual letters sent to our dealerships shows how each interaction, large or small, makes the overall Lexus experience exceptional. These experiences are the very DNA of what makes Lexus, Lexus."
