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Mike Linton
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the podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions and choices that go with being the head of marketing. Hosted by five time CMO Mike Linton
Mike Linton
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Drew Pinto
Thank you very much Mike. It's so great to see you and to be here and to reconnect with you after all this time. So thank you for having me.
Mike Linton
It's a lot of fun to reconnect. And when we say architecture, we're not talking about the building design, we're talking about the data Architecture. So let's start at that highest level. When you say architecture, what do you mean? And then secondly, why should a marketer care about it?
Drew Pinto
Yeah, great question to get started with. I will say, first of all, we're going to make sure that this podcast is interesting and relevant to you and that I'm not going to take you into the depths of architecture and bore you. But it is important for everyone to know when we talk about this. What I'm really referring to is what happens below the surface that gets marketers and other business leaders and executives the capabilities that they need. So if you're going to run a campaign, you want to target certain customer groups, you want to bring content forward, you want to distribute it to the right channels, all those things have a tech backbone and a data backbone. And so what I'm going to talk a little bit about today is just what, what are the strategies that happen down in that layer and really how we go about that and how we think about it? Because I think knowing that really makes every marketer a better leader. And again, I'm, I have a technology role, but that I've been doing for the past few years. I've worked with technology my whole career, but I also have a whole commercial side of my job. And so I feel like I've learned a lot about tech and how to use it and how not to use it in that commercial role about how to really make it effective. So that's when we talk today, that's really what I'm talking about. We'll use architecture in a little bit broader terms of kind of the underlying capabilities that make things happen.
Mike Linton
And do I think of this as infrastructure and piping to give you the answer and the data you want, or do I think about it some other way if I'm a marketer?
Drew Pinto
It's all the way down to the infrastructure.
Mike Linton
Yeah.
Drew Pinto
And it's also the data. I mean, data is such a key component of this. Not only where we store it and, and how it's formatted, but then how it's used, but then all the way up. You know, you always hear people talk about tech stacks.
Mike Linton
Yeah.
Drew Pinto
Because there's layers to it. And that goes all the way up to the actual tools that are in your hands on your day to day basis that you use to do your job. Those are all part of the same strategy all the way. If you want to go all the way down to like data storage, all the way up to something on your desktop, it's all part of the picture, right?
Mike Linton
And this is becoming more and more important than ever, which is why I asked you to be on the show. Let's start. You know, we'll talk about systems in general, but one of the things a whole bunch of people, especially if you're in a big brand, you inherit a legacy system. A lot of times it was decades old. Tell us an overview of what is officially a legacy system. Like, when do you become a legacy and when are you not a legacy? And how do you evaluate your legacy system? I mean, you, you. Yeah, I. I'm sure you're used to all the marketers and salespeople going, oh, the legacy system is killing us. It's no good. It is awful.
Drew Pinto
Yeah.
Mike Linton
Tell us your view on legacy systems, and then how do you evaluate it and then what do you do about it?
Drew Pinto
Sure. I would say in general, it's one of those ones, like, it's hard to define, but, you know, when you see it. Yeah, that's how I feel about it is, you know, typically, obviously old. Right. Been around a long time that, like,
Mike Linton
more than 10 years or more than 15 years or.
Drew Pinto
I mean, it really depends. I mean, actually, in some places you can have a system that's 20, 30 years old, and it may not. It may be legacy, but it may be fine. Right. Like. Like, deep down in the core, you have like a transaction system. Right. So, like the.
Mike Linton
Oh, right, yeah, yeah.
Drew Pinto
Like a lot of financial services firms, they still run a version of mainframe software that we have, and to run, like billions of transactions, you know, in a short period of time. It's very stable. It does what it needs to do. But I think a legacy system is one that, I'm going to say it's inflexible. Right. It just can't adapt to what the business needs are. And so that could be something that's five years old but was built the wrong way. It could be something like, in our case, we have some systems that are 40 years old that we're replacing right now. They've served us well. But you just get to the point where the rapidly changing business needs just can't be met by the underlying systems. Obviously, anything in the tech world is, got enough money, you got enough time, you can make it happen. But to be feasible and to really respond at the speed of business, you got to have systems that are adaptable. So that's what I would call legacy is. And when you, you ask, like, how we evaluate them.
Mike Linton
Yeah, because you. You want to know. Okay. Because every. It's really easy to say I have a legacy system. It's really easy to say, oh true, Pinto. And it is messing up everything I want. They were faster. How do I really evaluate my situation and know how much the architecture is holding me back?
Drew Pinto
Yeah, just I always remind everybody and again, this is what I've learned like over my career. I didn't not a computer science major, kind of learned this as a gun. But the number one thing is just to make sure that you keep in mind technology and data in that case is just a means to an end. It's a tool there for you to help you achieve what you're trying to achieve. So what I always start with is I go back to the commercial side, into the business side and I say, tell me what customer experience we are trying to deliver. Or in some cases, right, it might be for your employees, you know, associate experience. And then what are the drivers of value around that? So you ask, you start with very basic questions that, that you and, and everyone as a business leader start with, right? Like what are you trying to achieve? What's it worth? How far is the gap between what we want the customer to experience and what we have today? And you start there and then you flow it down and once you start flowing that down, that's when all the gaps are going to come out. Is it truly like an architecture thing or an underlying legacy system thing? Is it that we have the data, we just don't have it connected? Right. Like that's the case Sometimes we find out, we say, oh, you know, I wish I knew this about our customer. And it's a, because of our legacy systems, we don't have that right. Lo and behold, we go, we go investigate to try to solve the business problem of hey, we want to be able to personalize your stay in one of our hotels like this, that we go find it. We say, oh, actually we have that data. It's just sitting over here and it's not piped together so it can be used and pulled to the surface for the front desk associate when they're checking you in, for example. So sometimes that's where it's like, it may not be your legacy system problem, it's something else. And then in some cases it might be a process problem or a change management problem, like, but to know what you're trying to achieve, it sounds so simple, but it's, it's critical.
Mike Linton
I have to run real use cases through this, right? To see where the holes are. Not just ask it one question and then go, oh, it's the legacy System.
Drew Pinto
Yeah, that's, that's exactly right. And you get a variety of people in the room, some of which will be your technologists, but you'll also get your customer experience person, your user design. And you get them together and you say, this is what I'm trying to do. Like for us, obviously Marriott Bonvoy members are critical for us.
Mike Linton
Well, you guys had to smash so much data together to make Bonvoy.
Drew Pinto
You got it. And we have more than we use, so we should be using even more to make things even more personalized. But what we used to do is then say, okay, someone has one idea. Hey, wouldn't it be great to, you know, acknowledge your birthday, right. As a Bonvoy member? And then it was like the team would go solve for how do we acknowledge your birthday?
Mike Linton
Right.
Drew Pinto
And now we're saying we want to be your lifelong travel partner. So that means here's like seven or eight things along your journey that we able to do. If you bring that all together, then the teams that I have in my department sit down and say, oh well, these are all pretty similar needs.
Mike Linton
Right.
Drew Pinto
We want to make sure we have one place where all your preferences sit and that any system that needs to access that for any kind of use case, you're going to have it all pipes that way. So it works. Right. And so, so what that allows us to do is then when someone comes in and says, I don't really care about birthday, but like if you, if you get a new dog and you. Right, yeah, lots of pet friendly hotels, maybe we should send you a note, congratulations and know here's some great hotels to go to. Instead of rebuilding all that and doing another project, we just say, oh yeah, well we already have that data because we thought about the fact of what you were trying to do for a member experience in this case.
Mike Linton
But you're basically saying this, thinking up front, a lot of which should come from the customer interface. People should not be a one use case. It should be a concept when they can give it to you.
Drew Pinto
You got it. Yep.
Mike Linton
And like if I come and I say I want birthdays and then two months later say I want dog ownership and then three months later say I want kids and everyone builds three little things. It's kind of crazy. Instead of everybody getting together and say, how many possible things could we ask for that we might use?
Drew Pinto
Yeah, yeah, that's right. And, and just the bringing the tech people into your strategy. Right. Even if, and not at the end when you're like, okay, here's what we want to do, like throw it over the wall, go build this. It's right from the start, you know, again, very simple management principles, but they really work. And I'll tell you, you know, like the people who work on my team, they thirst for that. They're. Yes. They love technology. They love data. Yes. That's their. What they've chosen for their career. But they want to have an impact just like anybody else.
Mike Linton
I always had them come to all my staff meetings. I wanted to direct people assigned to the department.
Drew Pinto
Yeah.
Mike Linton
And expected them to go to everything. So they could argue it.
Drew Pinto
Yeah. Yeah. And then they get tapped into what you're trying to achieve because lo and behold, when they get in there, they, they know the products better than anybody else. They may innovate and come up with a different way to do it, but they, they understand what, what you're trying to achieve at the end. That's when the power really gets unlocked.
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Mike Linton
Hey, Drew, when we were talking earlier, one of the things you said is, it's not built to last, it's built to change. And how. What does that mean and how do you do it?
Drew Pinto
So I think it connects really back to what we're talking about with legacy systems would use. Flexibility or inflexibility is the big determining factor there. And so the way we build technology now is that you almost realize or admit right up front that you're never going to be able to predict what the business users or the customers are going to want. And even if you get it right at first, it's going to change pretty quickly. So when we say from built to last to built to change, built to last was these big monolith legacy systems that were now pivoting away from because the advantage was to make sure they were stable and had scale and they were efficient and, you know, cheap and all that type of thing and they did that really well. Yeah, but now those are table stakes. I mean you. Every system has to be affordable and has to be stable and reliable. What we now look at is say, how adaptable can we be? And so, for example, let's seize the our Bonvoy program again. We may want to change the rules of that program or the benefits that you get or how do we recognize different tiers of members. And we realize that as the experience develops and as people get their, I guess the expectations change in the loyalty space. And space we don't know exactly what we're going to need. So we built it in a way now where the underlying kind of core systems do the same thing over and over again and they don't change that much and you know, you won't have to touch them that much. But then there's a layer above that, that's where it's all configurable. So if you want to make a change and say, oh, you know, let's recognize people, you know, with different benefits. Now it's just what we call a configuration change. You change the rules in one little place and now it works. Versus the old way was you'd have to go down, you have to go
Mike Linton
down and reprogram the whole thing.
Drew Pinto
Yes. And that's the difference. That's the built to change component of this.
Mike Linton
But what you're also saying is the more the people building the configuration layer, especially the marketers out there or salespeople out there, the more they can say what is they want to be configurable, the better this will be. Because if you get it stuck down under the configuration layer, it costs a lot of money and time, right?
Drew Pinto
Yeah, that's right. And this is where I think it was. I loved your idea to do this podcast because this is why I say, hey, marketers, you don't need to know all this tech, but get to know a little bit of it and also get to know your partners in these areas because then you can really work with them and almost admit right up front, I actually don't know where this is going to go, you know, because the market changes on me, even if I did know the market changes on me, but here's the types of things I'm going to want to do and then here are the types of things that may change in the future and I really can't lock into a commitment here. Then, then rely and kind of expect your good tech and data teams to go from there and say, okay, well I'm going To build this in a way that gives us some optionality and that's really important.
Mike Linton
Hey, let's talk about. It's some. You guys are obviously a big company. You got it right. You know, I've been at a lot of big companies that, that really work to get it right. If I'm not in quite as big of a company or I don't have the, the infrastructure I might want, a lot of people will go to outsourcing a lot of this stuff. One of our guests was on the show and said the most important skill in the next 10 years, particularly given AI will be vendor management. Picking the right tech, picking the right people. How should our listeners think about the difference between build versus buy and, and you know, if, if they are very frustrated and they want to build something or they want to buy something outside of your remit, how do they go about that talking?
Drew Pinto
Yeah, yeah. I have been on the insource, outsource, offshore onshore journey and several different jobs here at Marriott. So I could tell you my personal experience. But also too, I'll, I'll just put a lens on it of if you're a smaller company and what you can do. Our basic premise here is we're gonna buy commodity. Right. We don't want to be in the business for something that is a pretty standard service that you can get out on the marketplace.
Mike Linton
Like what's an example of a standard commodity?
Drew Pinto
When we did the sex was actually a pretty big pivot for us just a few years ago. Is actually our central reservation system. You guys go ahead and book a reservation with us. That was our own homegrown system, 40 years old and we needed to rebuild it. And we actually went to a company called Amadeus, who's a partner of ours. So we said, okay, for the core reservation system, we're not necessarily going to differentiate that much about on that. And they have a very good product. They have other hotel companies on that. And so we have, we've now joined like a community which means any enhancement we provide or one of our competitors provides, they're going to build that into the product. So where the differentiation comes from for us is then you, it's how you assemble all the different capabilities across these commodity products into a customer experience we were just talking about. And really.
Mike Linton
And that goes to your built to change thing because Amadeus will change reservations as fast as anybody changes them versus one brand.
Drew Pinto
Exactly right. Yeah. I view that assembly as like the analogy I guess I'd use is you can buy all the ingredients and the appliances in the kitchen, the chef is where the magic happens. Right. And one chef is better than another one because of the product they produce and the experience that they create. And that's how we've. We've pivoted. The other thing I'll say is, again, the vice, the advice is not for everybody because they're. Everyone's in different situations. But what I would say is we've learned on the insource, outsource pendulum that you can go too far in either way and somewhere in the middle usually works well. What the place where it goes too far to outsource is you lose one, some really key skill that you're going to need because again, things keep changing. So you're. If you're totally outsourced, you're going to atrophy in some of those key skills and you're not going to be able to adapt as quickly. I think that's probably been our biggest thing. And then two is like you want to keep control over that differentiating factor, which to me again, is that assembly kind of layer. So. So for us, we found the balance between if you're smaller and you don't have a really big ability to have big tech department and everything. I mean, certainly outsourcing makes a lot of sense, but I think, I think you always want to retain that kind of middle part before it reaches the customer or your employees, and that you have some. You can have a pretty small department, but has some very skilled people there.
Mike Linton
So what you're saying is some assembly required? Yeah, it should be required for all companies. You use the word experience. Let's talk about customer experience and how that is affected by architecture.
Drew Pinto
Yeah. I think probably the biggest thing is both the good and the bad. If you have the architecture right, then the experiences you can deliver to the customer are much more enriched. But also you'd be a lot more flexible. So I'm sure a lot of your marketers that come on are talking about hyper personalization and being very tailored to people. Everyone has those same ideas. We do as well. Your architecture or your data is going to be one of either the holdups or the. Or the unlocks there.
Mike Linton
Yeah.
Drew Pinto
Can you, can you get to that information? How do you use it? There's all the security and privacy around it. Right. If you're not built correctly, then some data you may have that you could use if you had it set up right, you're not going to be able to use. So that's where I think it shows up.
Mike Linton
And Drew, how do I assess this because, because like what I want to say is, all right, because we're talking about architecture and data. Do I just pound it with a gazillion use cases or what do I, how do I, if I'm sitting out there, think, all right, I got to be ready for the next wave of AI personalization, All this stuff. I got a loyalty program, this. How do I assess what I have? Now, in conjunction with you, give us a tip.
Drew Pinto
I would ask the most fundamental questions that you think probably are kind of basic questions. Ask those questions about your data. Right? What data do I have about a customer?
Mike Linton
So if I was on the Bonvoy app and I wanted to be painful, I'd say, do I have coffee preferences for the room? Do I have this, do I have that? I could just make up everything like that. And then you would tell me, you know, do I have, do I have birthday dates, do I have pet status? And then you could tell me what I have and don't have.
Drew Pinto
Yeah.
Mike Linton
And then when I say drew, I'm going to go get that data. We don't have it. Yeah, some of it is not easily gettable, right?
Drew Pinto
Yeah, yeah. But at the very first thing I would do though is even ask just an open ended question, Go to your data team, your tech team, say, what data do we have? Like pick a customer, have them mask it so you know, you don't even see who the customer is. Just say, tell me what we know about our customer. Show me everything and where does it sit and how is it accessible. Just ask them those basic questions and see what answers you get. Either it's going to be, well, we can't tell you that because it's in like a variety of places or we have it all here, but it only gets, gets delivered to these channels. Or you know, if you're in a really data forward company, they're going to say, we have it all. Here it is, here's how we update it on a, on a periodic basis. Here's how we send it to the different places. Again, it's not highly technical. They can, they might drag you down into the weeds. You just drag a public up. Say no, no, no, I don't need to know the solutions or what cloud providers you're providing or you're using. Like, you don't need to know that. You just need to know the basics. Like draw me a schematic of what customer data do you have, where does it flow, right. And, and what channels can access it and you'll, you'll be Enlightened by the answers, especially by the reaction if they. Like, I did this, you know, recently here we. We've been trying to really improve our data on a variety of fronts. About a year ago, we hired a new head of data analytics in AI. Fantastic guy from. Hired him from outside the hotel industry. And this is. These are our first conversations as he got in. His name's Colin. And I asked Colin. Okay. And he had, you know, great answers. But not only, yeah, here's where it is. But he's like, but here's what's missing, right. And I love this term. I don't know if he's the one who coined it, but, you know, there's a lot of talk about data links, right. And everyone putting.
Mike Linton
Yeah, yeah.
Drew Pinto
So he called it data puddles. And he's like, there's, like, there's pieces of data that are really good, but it's not all interconnected. And so for someone like me, right. Who again, comes from more like the sales marketing background.
Mike Linton
Yeah.
Drew Pinto
That was really easy concept for me to get. I'm like, oh, okay. Then he took me deeper, right. Like, okay, when I say that, I mean, here's what we have and here's the places and here's what we have to do to interconnect them. But it made a lot of sense. And now it helps me with the strategy, the investment plan, how we deliver then data to stakeholders. Because I get it, because he showed it. Because I asked some very basic questions. And he showed it in a way that data puddles.
Mike Linton
All right, Colin. We'll call it the Colin rule. You must. I know when I did. When we did the loyalty program at Best Buy, the CIO at the time, Mark Gordon and I, he. He smashed 14 data sites into one.
Drew Pinto
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Linton
Right.
Drew Pinto
So, yeah, it's actually pretty fascinating now these days with AI, you might not have to have a data lake anymore. So it's really turning things on its head because everything's so discoverable. But you need to know where it is and what you have and you need to govern it all. And so that. There's a whole, whole piece on that. But it's really. Again, it just goes back to fundamentals, though, that for a marketer, a sales leader, if you just are clear, like, here's what I'm trying to do. Like our sales team, it's like, you know, when our customer, like a big group customer, goes from one hotel to the other.
Mike Linton
Yeah.
Drew Pinto
Other hotels just wants to know, how was the last event? What were they looking for? Did it go well or not? Did they have any special requests? We do all this manipulation to try to get that information to the next hotel so they can provide better service. Like, we know that now. So we're going to work on data to make it really easy for our sales team at the next hotel to be prepared. They don't need to get into the details of how that works, but they need to be clear about the, the business problem they're trying to solve and why it's going to benefit the customer.
Mike Linton
So if you are advising all the marketers out there, what are the biggest mistakes they are making in this space now? And what other than, you know, let's let the collaboration and the shared objectives. What, what are the top issues that you should be focusing on that we haven't talked about? So, biggest mistakes, top issues?
Drew Pinto
Yeah, I would say I'm trying not to cover something that I've already mentioned because we've talked about a lot of it. One thing I do notice a lot, and it's not just marketers, but a lot of people do this. They get enamored by solutions. So what this means is you've all been there, you go to some conference and some vendor shows you something and then you come rolling in and say, I want this, this is a great idea. Let's do this right. You know, tech people, they're pleasers. They want to make you happy. They want to go, so if that's what they think you want, they're going to go do it. So I would say step number, there's two pieces to it. Number one is before you bring an idea forward, like, do the vetting yourself. Is it valuable? How important is this to me? Like, what kind of priority is it?
Mike Linton
Yeah.
Drew Pinto
And two is don't get enamored by the solution and come with solution in hand. Come with everything else we were talking about, right? Like, hey, support, I'm trying to solve this problem. You can then say, hey, I, I met this vendor and I saw this and it was really cool. But then be clear to them and say, but I don't know if that's the right answer, but I want something like this that solves my problem. Because what it will do is, number one is then it won't box them in because they're going to. If an executive comes in and says everything we talked about before, they're going to think, oh, this person wants this solution, so I will give them the solution. But two is that it gives them a little flexibility to figure out the best way to Solve your problem. And they also have visibility into other things that we're working on because we have this mantra of like, we build once, use everywhere, right?
Mike Linton
When if everyone goes to a conference from every function, they're going to get like 20.
Drew Pinto
You got it? Yeah.
Mike Linton
Well, the CIO of farmers when I was there named Ron Garyer, he used to have this thing. Don't go rogue. Please don't go rogue. Just come back and tell me about it. But. And then we'll decide if we're gonna do it. But don't buy something and go rogue on me because mess up everything.
Drew Pinto
That is true. And, and now these days with the security posture that everybody has to have, it's now become, you know, a real issue too is if you go rogue, you know, like at one hotel and go buy something from somebody, you know, if it's not done correctly, there's security pieces to it. But, but the bigger thing for us is just, you know, just bring the idea. You know, just bring the idea and what you're trying to solve with the idea. It may end up be many times actually many times that the things the hotels discover and experiment with, they work with us and they become solutions. Then we re roll out globally. So the innovation coming from the field is great. We just want to know about it and what it's trying to solve because then one, others could use it. But two is maybe there's a better way to do it.
Mike Linton
Got it. So Colin rule and don't go rogue. So this brings us to our last question. Funniest story you can tell on the air and or piece of practical advice we haven't discussed yet. You can take both of those or one, but you must take at least one.
Drew Pinto
Okay, I'm gonna take the advice, but hopefully you'll find it a little bit funny.
Mike Linton
Okay. Just remember a double. A double header. Knock yourself out.
Drew Pinto
Okay, so I work very closely with our chief customer officer. Chief marketing officer. I love them. One reminder for everyone. Actually, there's two reminders. One is so for CMOs, you guys have a really cool job and you get to go to a lot of fun stuff. Like your, your job's exciting and fun and you know, there's events and partnerships and everything. So my ask is like, bring your tech personal.
Mike Linton
Take me with you.
Drew Pinto
You know, like, like my, my counterpart here, she's, she's great. She invites me to stuff, you know, and I try to get my team there, but like, you know, they don't really get to go out that much. So like, you know, Let them come to the concert with the, the great artist that you're sponsoring through your credit card deal or whatever.
Mike Linton
There you go.
Drew Pinto
Yeah, that'd be the big one. Two. Two is, you know, for any CMO out there, if you haven't done it yet, go, go take your head of enterprise architecture out to dinner. I mean, you'll find out first of all you'll find that he or she's like pretty amazing person. But two is you're going to find out a ton. And I think they would get a ton of value out of it too, to understand what you're trying to do. You know, I encourage everyone to do that across all departments, but especially like go talk to your EA lead. I mean they, they know a lot of stuff and would really appreciate it.
Mike Linton
Awesome. Well, I think that is a great way to end the show. Take your IT people to dinner and to events.
Drew Pinto
Yes, that's right. Yeah. Got a good sporting event or concert, they'll really appreciate it. I promise they won't embarrass you.
Mike Linton
Well, maybe my IT Ron Garyer once took me to IT for IT People where I presented with him and I'm like it by IT People for IT People. I'm like, that is not a very interesting title, Rod. But anyways, thank you true. And thanks to everyone for listening to CMO Confidential. If you're enjoying the show, please like share and subscribe. New shows drop every Tuesday and all of our more than 165 episodes are available on Spotify, Apple and YouTube, which includes it's a Bird, It's a Plane. Holy shit. It's AI Parts one and two. Is your next best customer an AI bot? Synthetic influencers. Should brands do it themselves? And where AI is taking marketing things that make you go, hey, all you marketers, stay safe out there. This is Mike Linton signing off for CMO Confidential. Typeface is changing the way to think about brand marketing at scale. Their marketing orchestration engine is the first of its kind and built specifically for the enterprise. The orchestration engine uses shared brand intelligence designed to turn brand guidelines into personalized voice, visuals and messaging delivered in a way that fits the context of your audience. It's how brands like Asics and Post holdings scale what works without sacrificing quality. Start orchestrating your brand at typeface. Aicmo.
Episode Title: Drew Pinto | Time to Think About Architecture
Host: Mike Linton
Guest: Drew Pinto, EVP & Chief Revenue and Technology Officer, Marriott International
Date: June 23, 2026
This episode explores the often overlooked but critical topic of data and technology architecture in marketing. Host Mike Linton and guest Drew Pinto delve into why CMOs and marketers must understand their company’s “architecture”—not building design, but the foundational systems, data, and technology that drive speed, customer experience, and growth. The conversation focuses on defining legacy systems, evaluating architecture, integrating tech and business strategy, the importance of adaptability (“built to change”), and how marketers should work with their technology partners to build for the future.
“You know a legacy system when you see it. It’s not just age; it’s inflexibility.”
— Drew Pinto (06:01)
“Thinking upfront…should not be one use case. It should be a concept.”
— Mike Linton (11:41)
“Built to last was these big monolith legacy systems...now what we look at is, how adaptable can we be?...That’s the ‘built to change’ component.”
— Drew Pinto (14:32)
“The chef is where the magic happens.” (On assembling commodity systems for unique CX)
— Drew Pinto (19:49)
“Ask your tech team: What do we actually know about our customer? Show me everything and where does it sit. You’ll be enlightened by the answers.”
— Drew Pinto (23:54)
“Data puddles...pieces of data that are really good, but it’s not all interconnected.”
— Drew Pinto (25:45)
“Don’t go rogue. Just bring the idea and what you’re trying to solve with it.”
— Mike Linton (29:49)
“Take your tech people to the concert with you.” (On building cross-team relationships)
— Drew Pinto (31:54)
This episode provides a candid and practical look at the intersections of marketing, technology, and organizational culture—all through a lens that’s relevant for CMOs, marketers, and business leaders seeking to drive real impact.