If people spent as much time planning for retirement as they did dreaming about it, Prudential wouldn't have had to enlist a psychology professor, a construction crew and passersby at a Charlotte, N.C., plaza for a social experiment involving a world-record-breaking 30-foot domino topple. Watch the resulting spot here.

How'd they pull it off? The short documentary video above offers a behind-the-scenes look at the suprisingly intricate process of building and setting up domino stones (from little to very big) for a rather nerve-racking chain reaction that could have easily gone wrong. Droga5 helped the insurance and financial services company pull off the stunt in order to demonstrate how a small action (like putting modest amounts of money toward retirement) can cause ... a domino effect.