Big news: Level has acquired BAM Strategy, an outstanding digital experience agency with deep roots in Montreal. This has been in motion for a while. Now it’s official. More reach. More talent. More firepower for clients.
This acquisition isn't just about growth; it's about the incredible potential to fuse our AI-powered performance media and analytics with their creative, CRM, and loyalty expertise. Our merger deepens our ability to turn first-time buyers into lifelong advocates, especially as AI reshapes how we understand, engage, and retain customers.
I've spent a great deal of time with their team, and the chemistry was instant. These are smart operators who understand modern marketing and are obsessed with client outcomes. They’ve built a great culture, and we’re pumped to bring that into the Level orbit.
What this means for our clients: even greater capacity to deliver measurable, lasting impact. Together, we’ll stay focused on real results, real stories, and proof of compounded performance that speaks for itself.
If you’re reading this, you’re already part of the crew building the future of growth. This move adds more sharp minds to that work.
Now, back to the regularly scheduled programming: what’s catching my eye this week in AI, marketing, and the not-so-distant future of growth.
Patrick Patterson
CEO at Level Agency
Tell Us Your "Not Good Enough" Moment
Every leader has that moment. The one where good enough wasn’t cutting it. If you’ve made a tough call that changed your team, your growth, or your mindset, we want to dig into it.
Good Enough Isn’t is where real operators talk through the decisions that mattered and the lessons they didn’t see coming.
Want a peek at the kinds of conversations we’re having? Listen to past episodes here: Spotify | Apple Podcasts
What's interesting this week
ChatGPT Expands Company Knowledge with Custom Connectors
ChatGPT now retrieves your uploaded data more accurately. Internal wikis, docs, and reports just became usable training material. For leaders, this upgrade turns “AI assistant” into “knowledge layer.” Get your data organized now before the tools outpace you. Read more
Claude Brings AI Intelligence Directly Into Excel Anthropic just put Claude inside Excel. That’s a direct challenge to Microsoft’s AI dominance in enterprise workflows. If your finance or ops teams live in spreadsheets, this could finally make AI a real business partner instead of a chatbot. Read more
Google Uses AI to Redefine Search Query Clusters Google is using AI to cluster related search queries. For growth teams, that means your keywords are being redefined by machines. It’s time to think in topics, not terms. SEO is now semantic, and intent is the new metric. Read more
How AI Is Reshaping Brand Creativity and Storytelling A Digiday video explores how brands are using generative models to blend storytelling and personalization. The takeaway: creativity isn’t dying; it’s multiplying. Teams that learn to co-create with AI will outship and outconnect those who resist it. Read more
OpenAI Expands Into Generative Music Creation OpenAI is developing a music model to rival Suno and Udio. The bigger story isn’t competition; it’s integration. Once text, image, video, and audio generation live in one ecosystem, brand storytelling gets faster and riskier. Read more
Deep dive: AI
Machine intent is rewriting how the web works
Agentic AI is changing the physics of the web.
When ChatGPT or Perplexity fetch answers, they aren’t “browsing” the way humans do. They parse structure, weight trust, and act on intent without emotion or fatigue. As VentureBeat’s piece explains, this shift will force a rebuild of how sites are designed, tagged, and monetized.
For growth leaders, the move is clear: optimize for users and for agents. Use structured data, clear source signals, and trust markers that AI can understand. Think less about click funnels and more about machine-readable authority.
This is the next evolution of SEO, and it’s coming fast. If a model can find, verify, and summarize your value in seconds, it will send you the traffic that matters.
How to protect your brand identity in an automated world
Marketers are racing to scale content with AI, but brand tone is often the first casualty. Martech’s analysis gets it right: you can’t automate authenticity, but you can codify it.
The smart play is training your models with brand guidelines that include examples of tone, approved phrasing, and “never say” lists. Feed them style data the same way you feed performance data. The reward is consistency and control.
As more teams hand creative work to AI, the differentiator will be voice discipline. The brands that teach AI how to sound human will win trust while everyone else sounds like the same machine.
OpenAI’s new AgentKit gives developers a starter toolkit to build and deploy AI agents directly inside the OpenAI platform. Think of it as a lightweight automation layer for connecting models, APIs, and actions without spinning up custom infrastructure.
For business leaders, this matters because it shows where AI workflows are heading: fewer moving parts, faster prototyping, and tighter integration with OpenAI’s ecosystem. But it’s not yet powerful enough to replace workflow tools like n8n or Zapier. It’s ideal for simple automations and quick proof-of-concept builds, not enterprise-scale orchestration.
If you’ve been curious about bringing agents into production without a dev team or complex tech stack, AgentKit is a solid entry point. It’s an early sign that OpenAI wants to own the automation layer too.
Ready to turn AI into ROI?
Level Agency is conducting a research study to understand how organizations are preparing for and adopting AI.
We’re collecting insights from teams across industries and we’d love your input. The survey takes 5 minutes and is designed to give your team a pulse on your AI readiness.
Once we’ve wrapped the study, we’ll share a full report with key findings and industry benchmarks to all respondents.
Special Bonuses:
Complimentary 90-day Action Plan: Organizations with at least 5 respondents will receive a free current-state assessment and a 90-day action plan to accelerate adoption.
Free 30-Minute Consultation: The first 10 responding organizations will receive a complimentary 30-minute consultation to discuss a use case and explore potential solutions.
