H/L VP of Engineering John Jamison on Making AI Behave
October 15, 2026
John Jamison is VP of engineering at H/L, an independent agency where he's building the systems behind multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, which is a fancy way of saying he's the guy responsible for making sure the robots behave.
He built H/L's core data platform, and now he's wiring the agency for agentic AI, creating flows and processes to do things the industry's never been capable of before. It's automation, pushed to make work faster, more consistent, and higher-quality, on the premise that AI doesn't replace expertise. Instead, it rips the training wheels off it.
John sat down with LBB to discuss AI-assisted storytelling, the delicate balance between IT, security, and bureaucracy, as well as AI video generation.
LBB> What is the most impactful, specific task or process that AI has permanently changed in your current role, and how does it drive qualitative improvements (not just efficiency) to your final output?John> The thing that AI has changed the most in my particular line of work is storytelling. Handling data and thinking about the narrative around it used to be a monolithic challenge, and once you get to a certain scale, it becomes exceedingly difficult to find the right mix of folks that can explore, clean, and curate interesting angles.
By letting robots take the reins on exploration and cleanup, it has allowed us to focus much more on the story and narrative we present to clients. AI has significantly altered even the way we show up, as most folks are now producing custom-branded HTML pages to present things like dashboards and slide decks.
The velocity created by these advancements has allowed more ideas to come to the surface, and it's allowed those ideas to come from a wider pool of people at the agency.
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