Last week, I talked about the energy of getting our team together in Las Vegas. I’m back home and off the stage now, but I cannot repeat this enough: there’s no digital substitute for smart people in the same room.
There’s a specific kind of trust that forms when you look someone in the eye, argue a point, and build something better together. You get this immediate speed of shared context that just doesn't happen over a screen.
Standing at the podium, I got to see more than 200 of the best marketers on the planet trading ideas and solving problems on the fly. It was pure collective brainpower. That’s how you get a massive group aligned in a few days rather than months of back-and-forth.
The Level + BAM Strategy integration felt real, too. We didn’t leave Vegas as “Level and BAM.” We left as one unified team. For our clients, that means one connected approach, smoother handoffs, and work that moves forward without constant re-briefing.
If you’re reading this and you’re not a client, take the principle anyway: The fastest way to get better results is to improve the systems that produce the work.
Now let’s get into what caught my eye this week.
Patrick Patterson
CEO at Level Agency
What's interesting this week
B2B Software Reviews Are Consolidating, and Trust Signals Are at Risk This consolidation isn’t just industry gossip... it changes how buyers validate decisions and how “trust” gets distributed online. When fewer review platforms control more of the category conversation, your profile quality, review velocity, and narrative consistency matter more. If reviews influence pipeline, treat this like a channel shift, because that’s what it is. Read more
LinkedIn Just Revealed How AI Decides Who Gets Seen LinkedIn is becoming a de facto answer engine for B2B, and this breakdown signals what the platform wants AI to reward. The takeaway is not “post more,” it’s “be easier to understand.” Clear positioning, consistent expertise signals, and content that maps to real buyer questions will compound. Read more
B2B Email Still Drives Pipeline, When It’s Treated Like a System Email works when it’s designed like a revenue workflow, not a content dump. The teams that win here know who they’re talking to, why they’re sending, and what action they want next. AI can help with drafts and variants, but the leverage comes from segmentation, offers, and follow-up logic that doesn’t waste attention. Read more
Predictive Tech Is Replacing “Gut Feel” in Creator Marketing Brands are getting more serious about creator partnerships because spend is under pressure and “vibes” don’t survive a budget review. Predictive tools promise a cleaner way to forecast performance by looking at audience quality, historical lift, and fit. The upside is fewer wasted bets, but the risk is optimizing for what’s measurable and missing what’s culturally true. Read more
TV Fragmentation Is Creating New Openings for CPG Brands Consumer viewing behavior keeps splintering, which creates both opportunity and operational chaos. The winners will be the brands that can adapt creative fast, test across placements, and tie exposure to outcomes without pretending everything is attributable. This is a measurement and iteration game now, not a “pick the one best channel” game. Read more
The Best Subreddits for Marketers (If You Know How to Listen) This list is useful, but the real advantage isn’t posting, it’s listening. Subreddits give you raw language: objections, comparisons, frustrations, and the phrases customers actually use when nobody is watching. If you want sharper copy and better creative angles, this is one of the cheapest research feeds you’ll find. Read more
Deep dive: AI
Why "using AI" only builds trust when it changes the outcome
The Martech study showing that 57% of consumers trust brands more when they use AI isn’t really about AI at all. It’s about expectations.
Consumers are increasingly aware of AI, and they now assume brands are using it to operate more efficiently. When that expectation is met, trust holds. When it isn’t, trust erodes.
The study points to specific drivers: faster responses, more accurate recommendations, and fewer mistakes. In other words, AI earns trust only when it improves execution. Slower support, generic personalization, or obvious automation errors do the opposite. Consumers don’t reward “AI-powered” claims. They reward competence.
For growth leaders, the implication is narrow but important. AI should be deployed where failure is currently visible: response times, routing accuracy, handoffs, and relevance. If AI doesn’t measurably improve those moments, it won’t create trust and may actively damage it.
This isn’t a branding play. It’s an operations test.
Is consumer experience replacing channel strategy as a growth lever?
Martech argues that customer experience is the ultimate growth strategy in 2026. Is that just a platitude? Not quite. They make a practical case: as acquisition channels saturate and buying paths fragment, growth depends on how well teams manage continuity across touchpoints.
So what’s actually changed here? It’s not that CX suddenly started mattering... It’s that your buyers are moving through disconnected systems faster than your teams can talk to each other. Marketing creates an expectation, sales interprets it, and service either confirms or breaks it. If those systems are misaligned, friction shows up immediately and compounds across the journey.
The strongest examples in the article point to operational alignment: shared data definitions, faster feedback loops, and teams optimizing for progress instead of isolated KPIs.
Instead of asking which channel to add next, the better question is: where does momentum break today? Fixing those breaks often delivers more growth than launching something new.
Lovable turns a plain-English prompt into a working web app. It’s for landing pages, internal dashboards, and lightweight tools. This is the kind of stuff that usually dies in a Google Doc while you wait for dev cycles.
It’s speed with something real. Most "fast" prototypes are just dead mockups. Here, you aren't just looking at a design; you're clicking through a functional tool. You can prototype an idea in minutes, put it in front of a team or a customer, and find out if it’s worth a real investment before you burn weeks on tickets and meetings.
It ensures you don't waste engineering time on ideas that shouldn't have made it out of brainstorming.
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