How AWOL Vision launched a full marketing campaign — without a product in hand

The Challenge

AWOL Vision had a new 4K RGB laser projector ready to launch. The marketing team had a window. Retail partners were lined up. Ad campaigns needed to go live. There was just one problem: the physical product was stuck in international shipping.

In conventional marketing, no product means no content. Photoshoots require a physical unit. Video production requires a physical unit. Even basic product listing images require something to photograph. The entire content pipeline was blocked by a logistics delay the team couldn’t control.

AWOL needed campaign-ready assets — not a few placeholder renders, but a full marketing toolkit: hero video, product photography, sales page imagery, targeted ads, and A/B test variants. And they needed it all before the product arrived.

The Solution

The AWOL team already had one thing: the 3D CAD file used to manufacture the projector. The same file that defined every dimension, surface, and component of the physical product.

They uploaded that single file into Glossi and started producing. Within days, the team had built:

A 60-second beauty shot video

A cinematic shot string of the projector on branded, professionally lit backdrops — 12 sweeping video vignettes ready for editing into any format.

Product photography for sales pages

High-resolution product photos covering every angle needed for online retail listings, all rendered from the actual 3D geometry with accurate materials, finishes, and reflections.

An exploded-view animation

A separating-and-recombining animation of all 274 internal components — the kind of engineering showcase that would normally require weeks of 3D motion work.

A/B test video variants

Two video ads testing different feature messaging, produced from the same 3D source file. Same product, different selling points — ready for split testing on day one.

No studio rental. No product shipment. No photographer. No crew. One 3D file, one platform, one team moving fast.

The Results

Within days of uploading their 3D file, the AWOL team had a complete campaign asset library spanning video, photography, animation, and ad variants — all produced in-house through Glossi.

Then they pushed further. AWOL had created a new product SKU — a bundle pairing their laser projector with a custom screen, positioned to compete directly against large-format televisions at a lower price point. They needed a targeted ad for this specific market segment.

The team had a final cut in 36 hours. From brief to campaign-ready ad, using the same 3D file they’d already uploaded.

That turnaround would be impossible in traditional production. Scheduling a studio, shipping the product, running the shoot, post-production — even the fastest agencies measure that timeline in weeks, not hours. AWOL’s team did it over a weekend.

From upload to a full-funnel marketing campaign in days. A targeted ad for a new SKU in 36 hours. All without the product ever leaving its shipping container.

Why It Works

The 3D design file is the single source of truth. Every camera angle, every lighting setup, every animation derives from the actual product geometry — the same data used to manufacture the physical unit.

This is fundamentally different from working with AI image generators or stock photography. There are no approximations. No distorted proportions. No guessed materials. The renders match the product because they are the product, visualized from its engineering data.

For AWOL, this meant the marketing team could run on an entirely independent timeline from the supply chain. Engineering finishes the CAD file. Marketing takes it from there. The two workflows run in parallel instead of in sequence.

That structural change — decoupling content production from physical product availability — eliminated what had been AWOL’s biggest bottleneck. The team kept the launch window. They got the campaigns live on schedule. And the product arrived to an audience that was already engaged.

When your marketing timeline doesn’t depend on your shipping timeline, you launch on your terms.