The Architect, the Plumber and the Pipe Wrench

This POV by Nils Andersson Wimby at Mindshare in Sweden first appeared in a substack newsletter by JP Castlin.

60/40; 4Ps; STP; SeeThinkDoCare. When looking at concepts, ideas and frameworks that have caught on in my field of marketing, it is clear that simplified, down to earth, and directional ideas are the ones that catch on. Nobody likes ambiguity, complicatedness or things being overly abstract.

This is something that I have tried to apply when communicating with various stakeholders in the real world. Working both as a marketing executive and as a consultant, I have been in conversations and collaboration with people from all aspects of marketing; departments, media sales organizations, creative agencies and media agencies, digital agencies, MarTech suppliers, and so on. In each, I have seen numerous debates, discussions, arguments and disagreements. They all relate, to some extent, to a dichotomy of perspectives. On one side, long-termism, broad reach, brand development: old, tested and true principles, just adapted slightly for new consumer patterns. On the other, innovation focused, targeted, real-time optimized work – with constant change as a necessity for survival.

One might think that these are merely opposing views of the same thing; either you are a believer in the church of digital transformation, or you follow the teachings of Ehrenberg-Bass. Same problem to address, just a matter of perspective.

I would argue, however, that they are not different perspectives, but rather complimentary views of different aspects of the matter at hand. You can believe in the value of long-term brand building and mental availability, while simultaneously acknowledging that digitalization and new tech has a great impact on some aspects of how we do business.

Part of the conflict stems from misunderstandings and semantics, and the attempted comparison of apples to pears. So, in keeping with the relevance of simple explanation models, I will attempt to clarify my stance by means of a metaphor – while at the same time hinting at some of the things that are wrong with modern day marketing. Let’s talk about the architect, the plumber and the pipe wrench.

In this metaphor, we equate generating profitable growth for a business through marketing and advertising to the practice of building a house. The relevant roles involved that pursuit are as follows:

The architect – great at designing the overview plan, balancing needs, prioritizing and owning the vision of the finalized house. Knows a little about all aspects of building, but may not be an expert in any specific discipline. Probably crap at plumbing. In a marketing context, this would be a strategist, an agency side planner, a CMO, or similar.

The plumber – an excellent craftsman. Knows plumbing exceedingly well. Knows very little about electricity, or landscaping, or architecture for that matter. In other words, they are a specialist. In the world of marketing, this would be a digital/social specialist, a Marketing Automation specialist, or a creative director.

The pipe wrench – one of the tools that the plumber uses to get the job done. Useful for some tasks (e.g., fixing a pipe), but useless for others. Translated to our marketing context, this is a practice, tool or channel; TikTok, Marketing Automation, AI generated content, or a cinematically shot 60 second emotional video for that matter.

All roles are important when building a house. If you focus on only one of them, you will miss out on a lot of of perspectives:

• Having only the architect view means losing out on practical considerations and risks of becoming disconnected from reality.
• Employing only the plumber perspective means you may end up with a house full of bathrooms and no roof or carpentry.
• Starting from the pipe wrench perspective means you may end up with a world class pipe, but nothing even remotely resembling an actual house.

In organizations, problems arise when different roles try to claim their domain is bigger than it is. And unfortunately, this is where marketing is at the moment.

• In recent years, some plumbers have argued that everything you need to get a great house is a good bathroom. Bathrooms have also been quite trendy.
• Pipe wrench manufacturers have also become a big factor. They are hugely profitable companies, with equally immense influence. Again and again, they push the message that pipe wrenches are the solution to most problems that may emerge in house building. They also imply that people who do not have nice pipe wrenches are a bit dated.
• There has also been a trend of supposedly agile bottom-up planning. This means that the plumber works away at the bathroom, the tiler on the roof, the window fitter is fitting windows, but nobody is looking over the overall structure.
• The role of the architect has been weakened while the craftsmen and tool manufacturers have gotten stronger. Often, this has resulted in poorly planned houses.

The lack of a shared understanding of the different roles has caused a lot of problems. People are comparing great plumbing to architecture, architects who want to balance the view on plumbing are accused of doing so because they just do not understand enough about plumbing, pipe wrenches have been praised as being so new, modern, and amazing that they may replace architecture altogether. We are getting better at starting things up quickly – less of that boring planning phase – but over time, we discover that we are building worse houses, which inevitably erodes the overall trust in builders’ capacities.

What is needed is a shared understanding of the difference between the three layers of building something:

• Long term strategy and architecture.
• Excellence in execution of a specific type of craft, based on the task briefed in an architectural plan.
• Tools evaluated on whether they are the most useful to do a job in a certain craft.

(An added layer to this hierarchy is the property developers (marketing translation: C-suite, management, stock market) who are the ultimate decision makers, but are not trained architects. In the current landscape, they are rarely exposed to the latest findings in the world of architecture. They are, however, frequently exposed to the broad and well-funded influence from pipe wrench companies. This does not help the standing of world class architecture, to put it mildly).

If we can talk about things based on what they are – strategies, crafts or tools – we can have a dialogue that is a lot more constructive. And we can acknowledge that strategy needs to grasp new development in different crafts, but still own the overall plan. Crafts, meanwhile, need to seize new opportunities, but be humble to their roles in the overall plan. And tools are tools; they may find new uses in new areas of craftsmanship, but they should always be weighed against a job to be done.

Although this metaphor applied to marketing here, attempting to establish common ground between brand strategists, MarTech specialists, CMOs, UX designers, creative agencies and even Salesforce evangelists, the principle applies broadly across organizations. Only by being humble, open to collaboration, willing to share information, and understanding the limits of our knowledge, may we build better houses, better marketing, and better companies.

And, please, have the courage to speak in plain terms. It is the only way to get more people to listen.

If you would like to discuss strategy with Nils Andersson Wimby at Mindshare Sweden, don’t hesitate to contact him here.