• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, February 15, 2013

Well, this brings a whole new meaning to “statuesque”: to promote Sports Illustrated’s 2013 Swimsuit Edition, the magazine teamed up with Lexus and Pearl Media to project massive 3D images of all 17 of this year’s swimsuit models on the side of the Caesar’s Palace Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on Wednesday of this week.

And I do mean massive: the poolside projections measured 51,000 square feet in area, according to Pearl, which is a lot of nubile flesh by any standard. The projection, which began at 7 p.m. PT, was live-streamed on the Internet for everyone not fortunate enough to witness it firsthand.

This is just the latest of a series of massive 3D projections executed by Pearl, which has also done 3D work for Tommy Hilfiger and LoopNet, among others. In January Pearl showed off its 3D capabilities with a promotion for LoopNet in which it made a 12-story building in Los Angeles disappear (tagline: “if a commercial property isn’t advertised on LoopNet Premium Lister, it might as well be invisible”).

Still, there’s nothing quite like gigantic images of beautiful people in their skivvies to get people’s attention, and Pearl isn’t the first to do it. In August 2012, during the Summer Olympics in London, H&M promoted David Beckham’s new line of “Bodywear” underwear by projecting (2D) images of the soccer Adonis in boxers, briefs, and boxer-briefs onto the famous white chalk Cliffs of Dover.

The images were several hundred feet tall and clearly visible to airplane passengers arriving in England, and supposedly even across the English Channel in France. The Sun tabloid cleverly redubbed the national landmark the “tighty white cliffs of Dover.”