Levels

Underdressed old ladies are my thing? Here's my favorite section from our latest campaign with Levels Protein / Blake Niemann. 3 months back, Theo Dudley started working with our team on this campaign for Levels Protein (full 60sec ad in the comments) Here's how we made it (and AI copyright tips): 🧵👇 Concept: Levels came to us wanting to launch a new spokesperson in the form of Sir Bovine Cowley, a gentlemanly minotaur passionate about their all-natural protein. Theo Dudley and I both lift (pics available upon request), and protein is very important to us, so from the start, we knew this couldn’t feel like a gimmick. Cowley needed to feel iconic. Confident but warm. Noble, articulate, and memorable in just the right way. Levels as a brand is bold and unapologetic about their product, so the character had to carry that same clarity. Nate Dern wrote the script, and Theo brought a strong point of view early on about how far we could push the world and the tone without losing credibility. Copyrighting the character: We brought in concept artist Bart Bus at the very beginning to properly envision Cowley. Starting with a human-led illustration process gives the Levels team real creative ownership of their IP and allows us to be ultra-specific with facial structure, wardrobe, posture, and expression. We went through dozens of iterations before landing on the version you see in the ad. This Cowley struck the perfect balance of strength, wisdom, charm, and authority. World Building: Cowley’s home and office were essential. It needed to feel lived-in, intellectual, and distinctly his. Theo used @theworldlabs to create a 3D visualization of the office, generating a Gaussian splat environment we could explore. Screenshots from that world became reference points for precise camera angles and shot composition. From there, he collaborated with three digital DPs @olgabrnv, Evan Zissimopulos, and Ben Munoz, reviewing hundreds of frames until we had something that looked remarkably close to a ripomatic before animation even began. Voice: The voice of Cowley comes from the wickedly talented Rob Ricotta. You might remember him from our nationally televised Defy the Odds Kalshi spot. Product: For the product shots, we worked with an incredible team, Eduardo Pricinato and Elton Felix, from efxlab.xyz, who had a bespoke, proprietary AI workflow to make labels and packaging look picture-perfect. The results were immaculate, no garbled texts or melting logos, and the client approved those shots on first look. Shoutout to our producer Rod Orozco for tying everything together! Full breakdown with images on my X account: https://lnkd.in/gwuDb2TR

🐮 This is going to be a long one. But the only way to do this justice is the length. Today, on National Protein Day, we’re putting a flag in the ground and launching an entirely new creative world at Levels. For the past six months, we’ve been rebuilding our brand from the inside out. New brand world. New creative standard. New hero commercial. In fitness and sports nutrition, Nike has become the North Star. And when brands try to orient themselves around that North Star, they usually swing in one of two directions. The meathead bro extreme. Or the hyper-polished, posh pilates bro-ette aesthetic. Different costumes. Same playbook. We had zero interest in sitting somewhere on that pendulum. As a leadership team, we’ve been pushing to break the mold in a space that rewards sameness. Not because it’s safe. But because it’s familiar. When we first conceived the idea for this hero spot, we assumed there were no real-world production techniques that could pull off what we were imagining without spending a fortune. In some ways, what we built here would not have been possible even a few years ago. But instead of backing off, we leaned in. We pushed the boundaries of how AI can expand the creative process without replacing it. Used correctly, these tools don’t dilute creativity. They unlock it. They open doors to visual languages that simply didn’t exist before. As our Senior Director of Brand & Creative George Cuevas put it: design rarely does its best work in the safety of the familiar. Its strongest outcomes are born in the risk of the unknown. The team Levels chose the unknown. I’m proud of the designers who went all in. Proud of a company willing to take creative risk. Proud of what’s about to launch at Levels. We didn’t play it safe. And that was the point.