How a British Cybernetician's Concept from the 70's Can Change The Way You Talk About Brand Today

“The Purpose of a System is What it Does” is credited to Stafford Beer, a British cybernetician, who wrote about management cybernetics in a the book The Heart of Enterprise (published in 1979).

The book applies the principles of cybernetics to enterprise management, likening business enterprises to operating systems that require viability and rules that govern it’s existence.

Change System to Brand and we’re in business.

When you replace “system” with Brand, you remove the facade of shiny decks and look at what your product’s benefit, company activities, and marketing are actually communicating to your potential customers.

“The Purpose of a Brand is What it Does” works around the problem of people saying that the purpose is different than what is actually doing. You can’t say your purpose is to save turtles if you don’t actually apply resources toward saving turtles.

Your management team (or pitch deck) can say “we’re disrupting the XYZ industry” but when you look at what is actually happening in the market, is that true? If you’re not literally causing a market to stop functioning normally, it’s time to start speaking differently. It’s more important to be the brand for a specific community than to set out to disrupt an entire market. Re-framing your purpose to what you’re actually doing is more productive for your marketing (and your company culture if we’re getting into it).

This heuristic also pushes companies to describe themselves with action toward a goal.

Extremely generally, things in motion are more interesting to to look at.

When you describe your brand benefits using action verbs and demonstrating momentum, you automatically become more interesting. And isn’t the goal of your brand to be interesting enough to get consumers’ attention?

Instead of saying “BRAND is the smoothest cold brew brand on the market” start saying “We invigorate your morning routine with the smoothest cold brew you’ve ever had.” What your product DOES is give you a caffeine hit in a way that discerning palettes can appreciate.

This reframe can also help as you dig into your brand evolves and innovates. Focusing on what your system business is currently doing can highlight the natural opportunities for portfolio growth.

Oh, and if you don’t like the answer to the principle, it’s time for change. But that’s another article.

Credit to erinmerylstudy for introducing me to the heuristic “The purpose of a system is what it does” in an Instagram reel and thank you Joe Litobarski for the post that broke down the history of the phrase.

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