Leeds production company Tungsten Media took a fantastical approach to B2B outreach recently when it produced 11 bespoke tabletop RPG-inspired mailer boxes, sent to 11 agencies across the UK.
Each contained personalised fantasy miniatures of real people at the receiving agency, over 40 in all, delivered ready for hand painting, alongside a 62-page hybrid production guide, character sheets mapping agency and production roles to fantasy classes, loot cards based on Tungsten’s service offering, and wax-sealed packaging.
Every miniature was generated from a headshot of the recipient using Tungsten’s AI image generation system (the same system used on commercial client campaigns), then 3D modelled and resin printed in their Leeds office and studio.
Tungsten pointed out that, as a 10-person company, “without AI, this campaign doesn’t get made.”
It added, however, that the creative concept came first. Every decision about character design, class assignment, and art direction was made by people. AI was simply the production tool that made the scale achievable.
“Every project we take on, whether it’s for a client or for ourselves, starts the same way. Protect the creative. Then look at what tools we’ve got to make it happen,” said Andrew Beniston, co-founder and creative director at Tungsten Media. “On this one, the tool was our AI system. On a different campaign it might be virtual production or motion control. The pipeline doesn’t change. The creative dictates which parts of it you use.”
“Production companies get one chance to make an impression and it’s usually a PDF attachment,” added Simon Sturgeon, co-founder and producer at Tungsten Media. “We wanted to start a conversation before a brief ever lands on the table. When agency founders share your work without you asking them to, that tells you something. You can’t buy that reaction with a capability deck.”
The organic response has been sustained. Agency founders and creative directors began sharing the boxes on LinkedIn within days of delivery, unprompted. Simon Bollon, founder at Boutique, called it “the most detailed, personalised and thought through piece of mail I have EVER received.”
Richard Sharp at The Sharp Agency praised it for cutting through “spammy AI-generated emails and messages,” a notable comment given that AI was tool to how it was made.
Weeks later, Tungsten says that the campaign is still spreading, with people who never received a box are asking what was inside and marketers who only know about it through word of mouth are asking the same question: “How the hell did you do that?”
At a time when budgets are being squeezed and most outreach defaults to the safe option, Tungsten claims that the response to this campaign suggests that B2B audiences will engage with creative work when someone actually commits to making it. Tungsten is now producing an end-to-end making-of video documenting the process and exploring the wider conversation around creative investment in B2B.
