Order in Chaos: Cybernetics of Brand Management 3662659573, 9783662659571

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Oliver Errichiello · Marius Wernke

Order in Chaos - Cybernetics of Brand Management

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Oliver Errichiello · Marius Wernke

Order in Chaos Cybernetics of Brand Management

Oliver Errichiello Hofbüro Eppendorf Büro für Markenentwicklung Hamburg, Germany

Marius Wernke Hamburg, Germany

ISSN 2197-6708 ISSN 2197-6716  (electronic) essentials ISSN 2731-3107 ISSN 2731-3115  (electronic) Springer essentials ISBN 978-3-662-65957-1 ISBN 978-3-662-65958-8  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65958-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Responsible Editor: Marion Kraemer This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Heidelberger Platz 3, 14197 Berlin, Germany

What You Can Find in This essential

• • • •

What is management cybernetics? What is a brand? The brand as a “living system” Brand management in times of social, technological and economic transformation • The cybernetics of the brand • The control of complex brand systems

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Elon Musk Tweet 3rd May of 2020: “Prototypes are easy, production is hard”

Guiding Principle

It’ll all be the same in a hundred years, a hundred years from now. For I’ll be dead and you’ll be dead, a hundred years from now. And somebody else will be well in the cart, a hundred years from now. Stanley Holloway

A thought experiment: Imagine setting up a camera on the roof of the main railway station of any major city in the year 1900. No matter what metropol—no matter what European country. This camera would even have the property of existing, although a century ago it was technically impossible to produce a device that would permanently film a station forecourt. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year. So let's run the camera over 120 years … and now look at this film in fast motion in a few minutes. What would we see? We would see that many people are coming towards the station and moving away from the station. Interestingly, it becomes clear that the movements take place in groups. Many people stream into it en masse at certain times and out of it at others. At weekends, smaller groups tend to form, which also visit the platforms late in the day. On Sundays it remains virtually empty. In the summer months, the flow of people is smaller. And on certain holidays, hardly any people come to the station halls. Mind you, these patterns of people streaming in and out are repeated in the film over the entire 120 years. It thus appears as if these individuals, who at certain times design their personal everyday lives in a completely peaceful way—in masses—are subject to an invisible, nowhere deposited or mutually agreed upon regularity. People go to their place of work at certain times, have free days on others and take vacations especially in summer. The seemingly individual habits of each person are led by an invisible hand, as it were. In other words, a self-contained life form is formed that consists of many individuals. Now our film shows 120 years of movements or ix

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Guiding Principle

patterns of behavior. We can assume that none of the people who can be seen in the first years are still alive or even still working. Nevertheless, the patterns continue and are now carried out by other people. The acting persons may change, the patterns remain. In social science, these patterns are referred to somewhat more soberly as “living systems”. It is characterized by its own cycles and dynamics. It is precisely these living systems that are being addressed here. The aim is to understand the universal prerequisites for the viability and thus the success of systems in their basic form and to present the laws of their functioning. In doing so, it is initially irrelevant for the structural analysis whether it is a social group or an economic body. One of the oldest and most successful economic bodies in the world is the brand. The brand is one of the most stable orders that the living system of society has produced. The brand is becoming an increasingly important research object, especially in times of acceleration and the infinite, global commodity markets. We have never had so many data, (psychological) in-depth studies, neuromarketing, creativity techniques, feedback instruments and scenario models that examine the essence of the brand and markets. And yet: The causes of the brand as a social alliance and shaping system are rarely addressed. Because with numbers and data you can only describe effects, but not the causes and dynamics behind them. The actual danger of this “addiction to numbers” is that we believe that we can control “social phenomena” absolutely—everything is a question of data. The focus to the number in brand management questions de-personalizes responsibility for decision-making: no longer is it the decision-maker who decides, but rather data-based analysis that dictates the decision. The professionalism and talent of the marketing responsible person is not based on the decision as such, but rather on the data collection and evaluation procedures that are precisely tailored to the target. As a result, the phenomenon can be observed that brand systems try to achieve their success through rigid process rules and statistical procedures in the face of the highest complexity of the modern world. But brands are living systems that must not fall into the status of identical repetition. No brand became successful  through absolute definition and fixation. On the contrary, the most successful brands are characterized by the fact that they constantly redifined the traditional offer: Coca Cola was initially a medicine, Facebook a digitized college yearbook and Apple a computer for use in advertising agencies. Complex systems must never reach equilibrium, that is, they must never be finished, otherwise they would be dead.

Guiding Principle

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Without a doubt, this balancing act is difficult: where does the brand have to stay itself and where and to what extent does it allow expansions and controlled deviations from its genetic code? The problem is that the all-encompassing fixation of all the brand's appearances lulls the decision-makers into apparent calm, which does not solve the actual challenge of keeping the “living being brand” alive. Brand management, on the other hand, means determining action corridors that allow variants—within the framework of the individual system. Economics is based on the idea of stabilizing a creative idea so that a complex alliance system can form around a service. This requires a constant balancing between confirmation and innovative adaptation. One might think that brand cybernetics restricts degrees of freedom in favor of a “system”. The opposite is the case. As a science of control, its conceptual roots do not come from physics, but from biology. That is why cybernetics is oriented towards the function and evolution of organisms, which can only survive if the different units react flexibly to changes and challenges within a fixed corridor (are allowed to). Only then is an idea able to stabilize and, in the best case, to spread as a real product or service, to put it simply: to become a brand. It is about developing initial prototypes to living systems and to lead them wisely. Oliver Errichiello Marius Wernke

Contents

1 What is, What Does a Cybernetic Brand Management Want? . . . . . .

1

2 What is a System?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.1 Living and Trivial Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.2 Persistence and Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.3 Autopoiesis as Structure Guardian. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.4 Stored and Spontaneous System Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 3 The Cybernetics—Basic Understanding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Origins of Cybernetics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Complexity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Systems Control and Steer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 An Approach to Living Systems According to Stafford Beer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Controlling the Brand as a Living System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Excursus: When Theory Became Practice—The “Cybersyn” Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15 16 17 19

4 The Brand as a Alliance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 The Brand as a Living System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Collective Performance Expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 The Authentication of Everyday Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

31 33 34 37

21 24 28 30

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Contents

4.4 Trust as a Social Power Field. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 4.5 The Shape as a Folder of the Brand System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 5 Perspectives of a Cybernetic Brand Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

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What is, What Does a Cybernetic Brand Management Want?

Economists, advertisers, and merchants all agree that brands are important and getting. In times of permanent change and rapidly cycling product lines, brands give entrepreneurs and managers economic planning security and the public confidence in performance and market overview. When it comes to the effects of a brand, there is little doubt. But how brands work, on what basis, according to what social processes and interactions “the power of the brand” arises, is much more difficult to describe. Most explanations get lost in theoretical models or abstract figures. From a socio-economic perspective, therefore, the task is to get closer structurally to the “brand system” as an interaction process between ideas, people, and things. The problem is extremely concrete: These orders are not tangible, they are, in the truest sense of the word, diffuse. Although employees can be seen in a company, their desks, their job descriptions and economic evaluations, but the process of communicative interaction leaves—at first glance—no traces. Some huge companies exist only as sleekly designed computer operations, but are highly real and structure more than just the economic world. The control of complex social systems is the art of making the invisible visible. From a socio-economic perspective, valid findings are available for the ­understanding of the “brand system”, because brand sociology is the doctrine of alliances. Alliances that people enter into with other people, groups with groups, but also people with things or (performance) ideas. The word alliance implies, according to our understanding of the word, a conscious and deliberate action that leads us to identify with a person, a group or an organization. A classical sociological view means with an alliance simply a supportive or affirmative action. It means that our own actions lead to the strengthening of the other. Even the purchase of mineral water at a railway station kiosk is a (short) act of alliance © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2022 O. Errichiello and M. Wernke, Order in Chaos - Cybernetics of Brand Management, Springer essentials, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65958-8_1

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1  What is, What Does a Cybernetic Brand Management Want?

formation, in which the supply of resources (capital) strengthens the acting company. 

Brands are social alliance systems. By purchasing or supporting a product or service, a provider is strengthened—the prerequisite for the existence of an alliance.

In this context, brand is not a design guideline, logo or advertising. Brand is above all a social alliance system that, based on certain performances, anchors collective expectations (one could also say positive prejudices) and thus structures the behavior of people. Brand is the result of a social process of information knowledge, experience and trust. In the brand, all socio-economic tasks and functions of an idea life form are bundled. In fact, for a company, the brand is the only bridge to its socio-economic environment. The combination of brand sociology and management cybernetics help to describe the invisible. Because brand sociology asks the question of which activities create, condense and strengthen alliances and which actions lead to the destabilization of alliances up to their complete dissolution. Cybernetics is the science of controlling systems or networks. By representing the overarching structure of all (living) systems, insights can be gained into the vitality of an organic or social body. 

Cybernetics isolates the structure of all systems and develops control options—regardless of size and purpose. It is a cross-disciplinary science that combines insights from natural and social sciences.

The brand itself as an important and omnipresent part of a living, chaotic or also preserving world is hypercomplex. The older it gets, the further it expands, the more extensive it becomes the everyday life of people, the more the degree of complexity increases. Apple, Instagram or Oatly are much more than computers, platforms or oat milk. They have managed to anchor certain expectations collectively and globally, despite the multitude of providers. This function goes so far that people are willing to structure their everyday lives according to them, for example by “swearing by products”, “blindly reaching into the shelf” or clicking on an application intuitively for a short specific information bombardment. But also emotions like dissatisfaction occur when the desired product is not available in the supermarket or an app fails temporarily. These human behaviours and actions arise when people constitute their self-image and

1  What is, What Does a Cybernetic Brand Management Want?

3

image of others through the performance function of brands. When does the gestalt territory of brands begin and where does it end that they develop such powerful processes? Traces of emergence, i.e. recognising overarching order in the chaos of options, are the goal of both brand sociology and cybernetics. While cybernetics isolates system structures and links them in such a way that planned control is possible, brand sociology works out the specific and concrete success pattern of a performance body. The guiding principle for this work is to bring these two leadership theories together.

2

What is a System?

Anchoring a central memory and decision-making track in people’s heads is only possible if brands appear as clearly distinguishable actors. Just as an organic body, goods can also be referred to as living beings or beings of ideas. They present themselves (in the best case) as a clear offer and structure the lives of people: Apple or Samsung, Ecosia or Google, but also tennis or football, Mozart or Metallica, the Maldives or Amrum (a german island in the North sea). The people of  our times act completely unthoughtful with these more or less clearly living beings, perceive them as body or, so to speak, human beings—attribute certain properties and behaviours to them, even though it is not at all clear where “Apple” begins, what it comprises and where it ends. These more or less clearly defined living beings are “systems” in a scientific context. A system is characterised by a boundary, an inside and an outside, that at a certain point interprets the world in a very autonomous way. The Austrian philosopher Konrad Liessmann points out that “the boundary is actually the prerequisite for perceiving and recognising something” (Liessmann 2012, p. 29). Liessmann refers to Spinoza: Omnis determinatio est negatio—every determination presupposes the exclusion of something else. Boundary-making is the prerequisite for identity, because identity only arises from definition and delimitation, from being different from something else. Sometimes these are world-spanning ideologies or world views, sometimes only the way a snack bar sells falafel in a pedestrian zone. Countless systems compete with each other—they all fight for our attention with limited resources.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2022 O. Errichiello and M. Wernke, Order in Chaos - Cybernetics of Brand Management, Springer essentials, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65958-8_2

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2  What is a System?

2.1 Living and Trivial Systems All living beings, of organic, mechanical or ideational nature, can ideally be distinguished in two forms: trivial or non-trivial living systems. A trivial or “simple” system is a machine. So a programmer may be given the task of developing software that algorithmically brings together customer data with defined target groups. The programmer will, based on his knowledge and skill, link networks, data carriers and commands with each other in such a way that, in the best case, the desired result—addressing relevant target groups with products and services—is achieved. The solution to the task can be clearly and unambiguously assessed. Trivial systems only know a binary success principle: The goal has been achieved or not. 1 or 0. The peculiarity of trivial systems lies in the fact that the system character is causally closed to the outside. Their behavior is almost completely predictable. Because the task fulfillment is based on the fact that all parts are known and controllable.1 Strictly speaking, also from the outside, special events / forces could act on a trivial system and thus influence it (e.g. weather or people who destroy software). In real life, no system can completely isolate itself from reality. However, here an ideal-typical differentiation is made in order to find an access to the unclarities of a hyper-complex environment through an exemplary category formation. However, the world hardly consists of trivial systems. The other ideal type occurs as “living systems” or “nontrivial systems” (in scientific discourse these are also referred to as “systems of second order”). This includes all living organic or  idea systems. These orders are unpredictable for both the actors within the structure and for the public. A functionalist view, which assumes that a certain stimulus always leads to a certain reaction, is not proberiate. Life comes to other experiences. So in the context of a brand, many different actors and components act which a) never  can be  defined completely and b) their interaction leads to own dynamics, which triggers emergent processes, i.e. unforeseeable reactions— a characteristic which is named “spontaneous orders” in cybernetics.

1 Strictly

speaking, special events/forces could also act on a trivial system from the outside and thus influence it (e.g. weather or people who destroy software). In the reality of life, no system can completely isolate itself from reality. Here, however, an ideal-typical differentiation is made in order to find access to the complexities of a hyper-complex environment by means of exemplary category formation.

2.2  Persistence and Adaptation

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A living system processes a stimulus in an individual, unpredictable way. So even if a brand is successful, this can never be predicted with absolute certainty despite all market research studies and extrapolations. Total rationality is impossible in living systems. Too many factors come into play in everyday business. The science journalist Mitchell Waldrop made this clear with some examples. So it is “quite natural” today that all clock hands move to the right—one even speaks of the clockwise direction. However, this is by no means natural, but only due to a kind of collective “lock-in“: A historical coincidence leads to the fact that certain techniques or inventions would prevail. The reality shows that the pointer of the clock of the cathedral in Florence from the year 1443 does not move to the right, but to the left (cf. Waldrop 1993, p. 47). 

There are ideally two types of systems: Trivial or living systems. Living systems are never absolutely predictable in their behavior.

The Following Differentiations Can be Made Ideally Trivial system (e.g. software)

Living system (e.g. brand)

Unambiguous

Complex

Predictable

Probable

Closed blueprint

Modular blueprint

Regulated

Partially self-organized

Static

Emergent

Identical reproduction

Self-similar adaptation

2.2 Persistence and Adaptation However, a scientific consideration of non-trivial systems is able to give certain probabilities with regard to success and failure. Because every living system characterizes a content stabilizer. This ensures that this respective order is recognizable as an individual structure and remains, secures its genetic code, but is also able to adapt to changed environmental conditions in a typical way.

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2  What is a System?

Cybernetics understands this content stabilizer as a “variable state”. This is shaped from positive and negative experience values, from preferences, knowledge, motives or habits. Similarly, new technical developments or possible segment expansions also meet this variable state. These respective impulses from the outside are processed and only then fed into the existing structure. A process that is referred to as a “self-referential loop”. One of the founding fathers of modern cybernetics, Heinz von Foerster, referred to this internal process of self-assurance as a “machine in the machine”, where the number of internal “machines” within complex systems can tend towards infinity—each “machine-like” impulse is checked again by a subsystem (cf. von Foerster 1997). Non-trivial or living systems are therefore living beings that, for this reason and despite their performance preservation, have a degree of unpredictability and indeterminacy—the future, but also the previous operation cannot be derived absolutely.2 This procedure takes place completely independently of the embedding in a cybernetic management theory in every living system. Living systems essentially exist in an interplay of persistence and adaptation in order to secure their specific nature in a constantly changing environment. 

Systems want to exist as a specific system, preserve their own form, spread and secure their own characteristics.

Brands as ideas are characterized by a knowledge of their own success pattern. As a rule, only what comes into resonance is reproduced. The categories for resonance are manifold: It can be the supply of capital or also public attention. Knowledge of a system, so the performance contents of a brand like Starbucks or Nike, but also of the prefered Italian restaurant, always results from the past, because knowledge from the future is not possible. And this knowledge is not arbitrary, but specific: It is the sum of all experiences in the interaction field of the brand. However, the complete focus on the identical reproduction of the performance pattern of a brand would put it at risk. After all, living systems are characterized by the ability not only to steer their own actions into the usual channels, but also to perceive changes in the environment and, if necessary, to make adjustments to their own performance structure.

2 Interestingly,

indeterminacy itself is subject to a specific regularity.

2.3  Autopoiesis as Structure Guardian

9

2.3 Autopoiesis as Structure Guardian Cybernetics undertakes with the “autopoiesis concept” the attempt to explain the self-determined actions and reactions of living systems and foundationally the socio-economic view. The word autopoiesis is a combination of the Greek terms “autos” for “self” and “poiein” for “make” or “generate”. Autopoiesis therefore means the production of something from itself. The neurobiologists and modernpioneers of cybernetics Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela worked out a theory under this term to describe living systems, making no explicit distinction between organic or idea creatures (or hyperorganic creatures). The basic thesis of neurobiologists is: Life means the constant reproduction of itself. However, this successful reproduction does not mean the slavish repetition of the always the same, that is, the making of an identical copy, but the ability in the interplay of confirmation and adaptation to anticipate the change of the environment and to react adequately to it, that is, life-saving—autonomously. Maturana and Varela write: “We use the term autonomy in its usual meaning. That is, a system is autonomous if it is able to specify its own lawfulness or what is proper to it. […] In our opinion, therefore, the mechanism that makes living beings autonomous is autopoiesis; it characterizes living beings as autonomous” (Maturana and Varela 1987, p. 55). 

Autopoiesis comes from biology and has been transferred to all living systems, that is, organizations, companies and brands. At its core, it clarifies the need for the interplay of constancy and adaptation if a living being is to exist in the long term.

The Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari has vividly portrayed these strange and autonomous, but omnipresent (idea) life forms in his bestseller “A Brief History of Mankind”: “Every large-scale human enterprise—from an archaic tribe to an ancient city to a medieval church or a modern state—is firmly rooted in shared stories that exist only in the minds of people. […] But these things exist only in the stories we humans invent and tell each other. Gods, nations, money, human rights and laws do not exist at all—they exist only in our collective imagination” (Harari 2015, p. 41). In this sense, a living system therefore characterizes an inner polarization that offers an “information label” in front of the unforeseeability of reality: brand, as the economist Jean-Noel Kapferer described it, is reference, but also signal (Kapferer 2008). This channelizes (otherwise) complex decisions and acceler-

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2  What is a System?

ates them. The more incomprehensible everyday life is, the more valuable these “learned” information carriers become. In addition to the information as such, these systems are also content-related: in the best case, a group trusts a certain carrier. Systems therefore always characterizes the permanent self-reproduction of its own pattern. It is alive if it ensures that it constantly produces further elements that refer to the basic structure that generated it. Organic and ideational life forms always have a “will” for independence in their reproduction—the desire to be recognizable to other organisms is a fundamental driving force of all activities and actions—regardless of whether the ideational life form is a person, a family or a brand. Some examples: The sunflower germinates, grows and finally develops in summer seed capsules that are able to produce the structure “sunflower” again next summer, even if the actual sunflower will long since have passed. Human body cells renew themselves constantly. Some organs are completely replaced by new cells within a few years—nevertheless we remain the same human being. An internal regulatory mechanism determines that the new cells correspond to the old ones in principle and thus secure the identity. The VW Golf has been around since 1974. The first model would no longer receive a roadworthy certificate today. Nevertheless, many features of this classic (beyond its design) have remained in the core despite numerous model ranges that have adapted to the social and technical conditions of the time, and have been adapted in a Golf-typical way. The Golf remains somehow Golf. In order to reproduce this structure, these processes must be self-contained. It is clear: Something can only be a system, that is, a unit, if it understands itself as a unit. It must, to take up the previous example, be designed to reproduce sunflowers and not geraniums or oaks, a golf should set out to remain a golf and not become a Tesla, even if it might tempt the VW Golf team—otherwise it would call into question the continued existence of its own system. Of course, the organism needs its environment (here nutrients, sunlight, materials, etc.), but it still selects the information or means that are relevant to its existence. Self-referential systems are therefore limited to their type, to an operational mode. Maturana and Valera formulate it as follows: “The preservation of autopoiesis and the preservation of adaptation are necessary conditions for the existence of living beings” (Maturana and Varela 1987, p. 113). This of course also raises questions such as how can the idea life form VW Golf successfully do without fossil fuels and at the same time strengthen the brand body? Life means, on the one hand, preserving the recognizability of the system, but on the other hand integrating innovations in such a way that the principle idea 

2.4  Stored and Spontaneous System Order

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remains attractive and connectable—a process that the term “drifting” (after Maturana/Varela) illustrates. The task of ensuring and the management challenge of a resonant brand therefore consist in determining the right balance of confirmation and novelty. The VW team must therefore be aware of the life-saving features of the Golf in order to implement disruptive technologies in a familiar system. For example, biological systems use messenger substances for communication and interaction. Idea beings use other forms of exchange. How does the interaction between system and environment take place in forms of, for example, a brand? Therefore, the sociologist and systems theorist Niklas Luhmann transferred the (biological) autopoiesis concept of Maturana and Varela into the social sciences. Core thesis: A system is formed by elements that are event-evoked. The exchange between environment and system, but also among system components, takes place, according to Luhmann, via communication: “By social system I understand any system whose operation is communication, that is, which constantly replaces communication with communication” (quoted after: Schuldt 2003, p. 24). In summary, autopoesis is therefore a decisive instrument to order chaotic impulses in the outside and inside of the organism and to implement or also to reject them in accordance with the structure.

2.4 Stored and Spontaneous System Order The brand is a system in which forces come into play that the economist Friedrich August von Hayek described as “spontaneous order”. This describes interactions that, based on certain conditions (for a brand, its performance pattern, its price, its distribution networks, etc.), form order structures—without these structures having been previously defined or implemented. Living systems therefore regulate themselves. Another phenomenon occurs: The resulting orders are often more complex and detailed than rule and function works that could have been defined by individual people beforehand. For example, languages ​​develop their own rule and function orders—their definitions and documentation take place long after they are spoken. A market is also an interaction system that can never be exhaustively described (the idea of ​​socialist planned economy failed precisely at this attempt), but develops its own organizational ways and strategies to act as efficiently as possible. Too strong rules and interventions by a superordinate orderer (e.g. the state or monopolists) can restrict entrepreneurial creativity, perhaps even undermine it.

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In a highly digitalized world that measures, categorizes and commercializes every movement, intention and action, it appears as if the actions of people were completely predictable and already stored. To a limited extent, this is also true, but the continuation of certain existing habits does not take into account “disruptions”. People act predominantly as expected, but not only. One reason for this is that people are characterized by an absolutely free aesthetic judgment in addition to logical, i.e. (culturally) established, thinking processes (so that no one can prescribe to another person that he or she finds a color particularly beautiful or prefers a taste). The freedom of the aesthetic judgment is a central idea of Immanuel Kant. In the “Critique of Pure Reason” (1781), Kant distinguished between “practical” and “transcendental” freedom: Practical freedom characterizes a subjective-rational weighing, which enables people to draw logical causal inferences. In addition, however, Kant defines another source of human decisionmaking, which is at least as influential, if not even more influential: Transcendental freedom is only committed to itself and switches off a comprehensive logic to the greatest possible extent—without being unreasonable or self-destructive. This anthropological talent conditions uncertainties (and creativity) in all areas of human life despite the manifold instruments of measurement and prognosis that the digitalization of all areas of life provides—and economic activity will still be made by and through people. Economic processes escape an absolute probability, i.e. a safe prognosis, due to the socio-psychological dispositions. 

Living systems are never absolutely predictable in terms of their options for action. This is due to the human freedom of the “aesthetic judgment”. People do not decide exclusively rationally, but deeply emotionally. This uncertainty conditions freedom and disruptive creativity.

Reality is characterized by unpredictable events: No model could have predicted the success of Apple, or Red Bull, or electric mobility (in contrast to hydrogen). The “human factor” causes uncertainties. Because where there are people, there are (self-)consciousness and relationships, expectations and habits, interests and needs, creativity and misjudgment, will and imagination, ethics and morality, stubbornness and responsibility … the human is and remains an infinite tangle of possible and especially unlikely options. These system orders create an analytical challenge for brands in terms of how stored and spontaneous orders can be estimated. So it is important to develop indicators that show when the interactions between the system components no

References

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longer work or are even set aside. In the following chapters we would like to approach these indicators.

References Harari YN (2015) Eine kurze Geschichte der Menschheit. Pantheon, München Kapferer JN (2008) The new strategic brandmanagement, 4. edn. Kogan Page, London Liessmann KP (2012) Lob der Grenze. Zsolnay, Wien Maturana HR, Varela FJ (1987) Der Baum der Erkenntnis. Die biologischen Wurzeln menschlichen Erkennens. Goldmann, Gütersloh Schuldt C (2003) Systemtheorie. CEP Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg von Foerster H (1997) Der Anfang von Himmel und Erde hat keinen Namen. Kadmos, Wien Waldrop MM (1993) Inseln im Chaos. Die Erforschung komplexer Systeme. Rohwolt, Reinbek

3

The Cybernetics—Basic Understanding

The term “cybernetics” comes from the Greek “kybernetes”. It means “steersman”. In words like governor or governance, the etymological origin can still be heard. Cybernetics is the science of the control, regulation and steering of systems. Just as a helmsman on a ship tries to reach his goal by reacting to winds, waves and currents as well as other ships, a cyberneticist tries in a dynamic environment to achieve certain goals by means of a well-thought-out control. The helmsman on a ship has the task of using or instructing the different “departments” of a ship in such a way that they work together to achieve the goal. For this it is not only necessary to know the function of a ship, but above all a helmsman must be able to process information in a targeted manner. His task is not to be an expert in all areas, for example meteorology or hydrography. On the contrary: Too much information would interfere with the navigation process, perhaps even endangering the control, because the helmsman no longer takes into account all other, but also relevant environmental aspects in his activities. Cybernetics is therefore a science of understanding, explaining and systematically using information. Information is the third basic quantity of nature, next to matter and energy. The “art” of a cybernetic approach lies in the organization of information. Because it is not the raw materials, i.e. the tangible material per se that makes living systems alive, but the organization and the resulting pattern or order. Fredmund Malik writes about this in a comprehensible way: “If you know that an object consists of about 15 kg of coal, 4 kg of nitrogen, 1 kg of lime, ½ kg of phosphorus and sulfur, about 200 g of salt, 150 g of potassium and chlorine and about 15 other materials as well as 4 to 5 buckets of water—what do you know then? In principle, nothing. Shaped by the scientific way of thinking and educated on the basis of its logic, only a few will come up with the idea of answering: It depends on how you organize these materials … But that’s exactly © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2022 O. Errichiello and M. Wernke, Order in Chaos - Cybernetics of Brand Management, Springer essentials, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65958-8_3

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what it’s all about. The raw materials mentioned are what we get when we break a person down into their components” (Malik 2006, pp. 403–404). 

Cybernetics deals with configuring information so that a planned control of a closed system is possible.

3.1 Origins of Cybernetics The mathematician Norbert Wiener is considered the inventor of the scientific term “cybernetics”, which he proposed at a meeting of scientists (including Gregory Bateson, Magret Mead, Heinz von Foerster, Claude Shannon and W. Ross Ashby) in 1948. Wiener wanted to use this term to cover the entire field of control engineering and information theory, in machine or living being. Cybernetics is therefore the science of control and message transmission in living beings and machines. Later, the cyberneticians of the first hour integrated sociological and social psychological approaches into their natural science approaches. Wiener moved the interplay of man and man, man and machine as well as machine components into the center of his considerations. The scientists initially agreed on two contents that systems need for their functioning: a) Information: Systems consist of an indefinite amount of information. b) Circular causality: The effect of information is the exchange. The exchange enables the system to correct or adapt system deviations. Life is therefore not only about matter and energy, but if these components are permeated by information and thus ordered systematically  Strictly speaking: Not the What is important for a system, but rather How the components are arranged and linked together to make them become "alive". Cybernetics replaces a mechanistic way of thinking with a perception that is orientated at biology. Biologically oriented thinking regards the object of analysis as a process-adaptable but defined system in its core. This makes it clear why, from a cybernetic point of view, companies or markets are not a special case of human coexistence. If one understands and leads a brand as a living system, then one can derive knowledge and rules from the experiences of other living systems. Systems in which we otherwise move in a "natural" way, for example in a family or a community.

3.2 Complexity

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Cybernetics tries to isolate these arrangements and links - their social architecture - and control them, so that the system character can be used to the best possible extent. However, this analysis does not mean that complexity is drastically reduced in order to be able to grasp the systematics. The danger is that in this way the degrees of freedom are destroyed, which determine the constructive mutation and adaptability of the system, its “specialty”. System control therefore does not mean reducing complexity, but strategically focusing on complexity. “Keep it simple” may seem catchy in times of quick slogans and methods, but outstanding abilities are always the result of the highest complexity. It remains a central task of brand management to communicatively conceal this complexity. Coca Cola is a soft drink that stands behind a cross-generational communication history and a sensitive calibration of received and sent signals over a century, as well as a finely sophisticated global distribution and distribution network, takes place at billions of contact points below the surface. 

System control and steering does not mean reducing complexity, but emphasizing the functions that are necessary to preserve individuality. Otherwise, a system runs the risk of losing its autonomously anchored and lifesaving adaptability.

3.2 Complexity What does complexity mean? The term complexity has been experiencing an inflationary spread in recent years, especially since digitalization and technization of all areas of life: Organizations and family constellations are suddenly complex, even a relationship status is characterized as complex. In everyday life, the idea of complexity implies something complicated. A problem cannot be solved in a balanced and long-term way by a simple strategy because there are many stakeholders and influencing factors. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Gerd Binning explained complexity as follows: “Complexity is an extremely difficult concept that, to my knowledge, has not yet been clearly defined. The more information is exchanged within and with a system, the more complex it is. How much information is contained in a single living being? […] It contains the information of what the environment of the living being looks like, further the information of how its organs work, how its cells

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are built, how macromolecules, how molecules, how atoms …, how the dimensions of space are built and constructed, etc. […] We conclude from this: The complexity of every system is inconceivable large. Whether it is infinite or only inconceivably large is not so important at the moment. […] It was the hope of the physicists that the complexity would be smaller for more elementary sub-systems. […] But if you look even further into the details, it gets more complicated again. In addition, there is no end to the chopping up into sub-units. The complexity apparently does not come to a limit when you look more closely.” (Binning 1997, pp. 234–235). If you look at living systems, the complexity becomes even more confusing, because it is not even clear what the company includes in terms of its presence— much more than just advertising or PR. There are therefore no overarching reference units that are usually the basis for a scientific comparison. As a rule, a company consists of specialized departments that need to communicate with each other in order to finally achieve the desired effects and results, for example the production or provision of a product or service. These departments in turn form sub-units that communicate with each other and interact with each other through feedback loops. The contents of the communication, the possible options and effects are again highly diverse, not to mention unenvisageable. The flow of information of living systems has to master situational challenges, that is, the creativity described above, but at the same time reproduce its basic structure, its genetic code. The mastermind of management cybernetics Stafford Beer aptly called this process “the principle of completion from the outside”. 

Complexity means the number of different variants that a system can play without losing its specific typology or recognizability.

Systems have the task of limiting the infinite possibilities focused. So the “family as a system” already mentioned above is a highly successful model of human evolution complexity reduction. In a family, very different tasks are usually done without being spoken and possibly tasks (without contract or lengthy negotiation) delegated. This systemic exchange takes place daily on a small scale and usually covers the entire lifetime. While the forms of family may differ historically and culturally, or (to this day) change, the social construct of family remains transhistorical and transcultural a constant of human coexistence. The larger the range of behavior, the more difficult it is to control or steer in terms of desired goals. Simply put: a state system is more diverse in its presence and manifestations than a falafel stand. The peculiarity lies in the fact that

3.3  Systems Control and Steer

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complex structures, such as companies, are never fully controllable. Because a company is already complex in terms of the departments and sub-departments involved, but in addition there is the market itself, in which a number of other actors act with the same complexity. The management of this complexity requires the actions of the other market participants to anticipate—a process that, in addition to observation and market research, is based primarily on assumptions, probabilities and assumptions. 

No living system is completely controllable.

3.3 Systems Control and Steer In order to manage large complexity, companies must have a high degree of selfregulation and allow space for this development, possibly even fighting for it. Only in this way does a state arise that brings an autonomous ordering system to life. In addition to the regulatory frameworks that every economic system needs, it is necessary to make the subsystems “run” so that an autonomous functional network is formed that controls and controls itself. A prerequisite for this is that a documented, but above all intuitive, understanding of the system core is anchored in all employees. This genetic code defines all services and processes of a system, but at the same time allows deviations from the rule in order to develop creativity and thus possibly up-to-date solutions for a permanently changing environment on the basis of these mutations. Only through mutations can new and adequate, i.e. successful rules for a system arise and be learned. 

Mutations, i.e. deviations from the system type, are chances to remain relevant over time.

For living systems this means: dynamics is evolution. The number of possible appearances is very high in complex contexts. However: every living system has, structurally speaking, committed itself to limiting the number of theoretically infinite possibilities (modes). Habit is one of the most powerful option reducers. As an example: this is how a language works because the speakers (unspoken) agree to adhere to the basic rules of phonetics and grammar. Reduction and control are both terms that are today more negatively connoted. In times of hyper-individuality and autonomy, we do not want to be restricted or

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controlled. Here it is about another meaning of the word: Controlling means to ensure a connection or interaction, to regulate and to steer. The subject of cybernetics is to control an optimal exchange of information within a system in order to secure its viability. In the present case, it is above all about steering the “unique position in the head of people” who use brands in such a way that there are no irritations at all in the categorization and choice (e.g. by purchase). Complexity leads to the fact that one knows very little about the dynamics of living systems. But above all, it is usually not known what would not work. Understanding means to know about comparable reference points. Learning is only possible through comparison. However, since market and actors are subject to a constant process of adaptation within the economy, it is becoming increasingly difficult to derive a general rule or even knowledge from certain facts, after all, the basis on which these rules are derived changes permanently. In addition, economic goals define the categories for success differently. If increase in awareness is a proof of economic  success, then no positive prejudices have to be anchored collectively. Short-term attention is created by irritations, taboos or atypical behavior of an actor—nothing is easier to achieve. However, the impact  of this attention is short and not linked to a specific performance pattern—everyone could use it for themselves.  This "strategy" does not develop any memory and habits in the heads of people. The economics of the world of goods shows that living systems are only successful if they promote information patterns and don`t try to generate new and completely different resonance over and over again—the effort is immense and resource-consuming each time. 

Attention is usually not a category for success, since the content is mostly outside the system and therefore interchangeable. In the long term, transaction costs should be reduced by controlling a system.

In a cybernetic management strategy, the complexity of living systems is divided into modules that characterize all living beings. This makes it possible to prepare the status of the modules or system levels in a targeted manner and to assess their quality with regard to their quality. The control of complex systems does not take place by means of the comprehensive checking of all processes (which is not even possible), but by ensuring the self-regulation of the system. Responsible persons in the company only set the framework or action corridor. Just as in chess, the playing field and the activities of the figures are regulated, but otherwise the game is free. As a result, chess is not a game like any other and the number of possible moves is 10 to the power of 155, that is, a 10 with 155 zeros. For comparison: The Milky Way comprises 10 to the power of 11 stars.

3.4  An Approach to Living Systems According to Stafford Beer

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Cybernetics takes over the analysis and organization of architectures of selforganization and self-regulation. The goal, according to Stafford Beer, is simple: To organize a system as far as possible so that it organizes itself as much as possible. This is particularly successful if one takes into account another law of living systems: It is known in cybernetics under the term “Ashby’s law” and states that with the increase in complexity of the system, the variability of the control options must increase. This means concretely: In order to control a system, just as much complexity is needed as the system itself. The better a system is controlled, the more information it has about itself. The following examples: A symphony can usually not be played with three tones, a five-course menu can not be prepared with only one ingredient and the Bible can not be translated from the original text into German with three terms. 

Goal of cybernetic management: Organize a system so that it organizes itself.

The art of an evolutionary leadership is to be aware of the limited leadership options and to understand them as a strength. By deliberately leaving free spaces, a manager enables the system to self-control itself. I living system  being, the action. This approach is in contrast to a mechanistic view and control of living systems that try to define the actions in detail and not just action corridors. A cybernetic management does not try to determine an absolute organisation  (such as with software), but rather mainly the isolation and definition of the mechanisms and processes that make a body viable. Goal: Create degrees of freedom so that the success pattern can be constantly optimized and thus evolve.

3.4 An Approach to Living Systems According to Stafford Beer “Viable Systems have the ability to make a response to a stimulus which was not included in the list of anticipated stimuli when the system was designed. They can learn from repeated experience what is the optimal response to that stimulus. Viable systems grow. They renew themselves—for example, by self-reproduction. They are robust against internal breakdown and error. Above all, they continuously adapt to a changing environment and thus survive—possibly in conditions which had not been entirely foreseen by their designer” (Beer 1981, p. 256).

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Stafford Beer has developed an approach to the control of living systems that exposes the individual functional modules and thus makes their interlocking mechanics clear. In his core thoughts it is still up to date and forms the basis for cybernetic management models. Because the technical developments and the digitalization of everyday life up to economic processes and actors have not changed the structure of living systems. The theory of “living systems” (“Viable System Model—VSM”) was developed by Beer in his book “Brain of the firm” in 1972. Despite the orientation towards the human neurosystem, Beer relates the systematics to all forms of living systems, i.e. organic life forms as well as organisational life forms such as states, communities and companies. Living systems are characterized by the fact that they have an interest maintaining their existence.  This is achieved by all systems understanding themselves as closed, delimitable units. But they are able to learn, adapt and evolve through certain properties and mechanisms. This is based on three basic properties that characterize living systems: 1. Viability 2. Recursivity 3. Autonomy To 1. Under viability, Beer understands a form of existence that goes beyond “existence” and offers development opportunities. This is possible if the system provides for internal stability, i.e. neither acts in absolute identical reproduction nor in absolute adaptation to the environment. The systems theorist Martin Adam explains: “The VSM is thus a model in which feedback loops are connected to each other in multiple stages and thus enable a self-contained functioning. This, self-related functioning enables the system to adapt to changes in the environment, to learn, to develop, to coordinate and integrate its parts […] At the same time, it is able to maintain this organization and thus to ensure internal stability. All this enables the system to select effective behaviour and thus to cope with external and internal complexities” (Adam 2001, pp. 51–52). To 2. Recursivity or “theorem of invariant structure” (Beer 1979, p. 73) means that every living system is part of a living system and consists of living systems in its subcategories. This fractal (self-similar in the sense of brand sociology) principle can be applied to all levels of any system, making the analysis of empirical facts

3.4  An Approach to Living Systems According to Stafford Beer

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practicable. Beer emphasizes: “Then if we have a model of any viable system, it must be recursive. That is to say, at whatever level of aggregation we start, then the whole model is rewritten in each element of the original model, and so on indefinetely” (Beer 1973, p. 5). To 3. A system’s autonomy comprises a system’s own interest in preserving itself. As a central finding, Beer states: “Autonomy [is] the freedom of an embedded subsystem to act on its own initiative, but only within the framework of action determined by the purpose of the total system” (Beer 1985, p. 105). Autonomy therefore requires the freedom of a system to determine its behavior. Since each part of a system is itself a living system, it has autonomy at all levels—within the respective action framework. However, all system components are elements of an overarching system that itself has a vital interest in securing its original existence. Autonomy is therefore always a interplay between self- and overarching, central interests. Adam explains: “The systems […] are equipped with the necessary and sufficient structural conditions to fulfill their own activities. […] So the countries of a federal state act autonomously in many matters without the federal government having to deal with them in detail. The vertical component of the VSM, on the other hand, serves to hold the system together. This is done via […] interventions” (Adam 2001, p. 54). Beer differentiates in his approach into five modules, with modules 1-3 being operationally oriented, while modules 4 and 5 are strategic, i.e. future-oriented and do not intervene in everyday business: Operative Module 1 (Can and Do) The production chambers of a system that are directly related to the environment. For example, in the case of a company, production, research and development or sales—that is, all departments that contribute to the daily implementation of the service. Module 1 produces clear indicators such as demand, price, raw material requirements. Operative Module 2 (Orientation and Coordination) Corporate management that receives, checks and instructs the input and output of Module 1 as well as forwards the findings and indicators to Module 3. Operative Module 3 (Organize, Manage, Optimize) Controls access to the output of the system and checks the specifications.

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Modules 1, 2 and 3 allow, through their focus on everyday business and the preparation of control-relevant information, the strategic orientation of the living system by modules 4 and 5. However, modules 4 and 5 already come into action if anomalies or fundamental unforeseen events should occur in the everyday production and acceptance process. Strategic Module 4 (Planning, Interaction, Relationship Maintenance) Defines the specifications and estimates new challenges and trends, plans (based on the possibilities of the system in module 1) assumed external needs—possibly adapts the possibilities of the system. However, this is only possible in terms of system maintenance if a central authority has defined goals and evaluation criteria. Strategic Module 5 (Identity and Goals) “Normative folders”, that is, style, typology and creative idea of the system. In a cybernetic-brand sociological perspective, module 5 is the central creative power center. It is an often willful design intervention by a founder who interprets reality in a very specific area or industry in his own way. However, this imagined system can only be kept up-to-date and future-proof through preservation, development and constant self-similar reproduction (formal systematics). All manifestations of a system must be able to be tested for this existence idea—a fact that is referred to as “self-similarity” in brand sociology. 

Beers’ model of living systems not only provides the structure to understand systems across their functions, but is based on the recognition that, in turn, the 5-modules are en miniature, that is, reduced, effective within each module. A process that is referred to as “self-referentiality” and that Adam describes as follows: “By adaptation, the structure of the environment and the organism changes, but not the autopoietic structure and thus not the identity of the system” (Adam 2001, p. 105).

3.5 Controlling the Brand as a Living System A brand is an "idea organism" and therefore to be understood as a living system in Beer’s sense. A brand is a specific organizational pattern. Starting from a creative idea for a certain range of services, it grows into a brand organism. This brand organism is, in its idea, in its style and in its typology, a self-con-

3.5  Controlling the Brand as a Living System

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tained and delimited system, which in turn can be differentiated into individual organizational areas. This self-contained and delimited system only becomes recognizable to people as a brand when people experience it. Apple, Nutella or Carrefour —they all consist of a unique organizational pattern. Within this, certain organizational areas are more or less relevant to the public. While production is a decisive aspect for communication for Veja shoes, it is almost irrelevant for Nutella. Apple, on the other hand, stages its technical developments, and the production process plays hardly any role in the experience of the products (Fig. 3.1). The following figure makes the situation clearer: For this purpose, the “Viable System Model” presented in the previous chapter was abstracted in its basic idea and transferred to brand sociology. The aim is to make the access to the “living system brand” more comprehensible and controllable. Brands are part of the reality of our lives, but what does reality mean? A dictionary  describes reality as “the area of ​​what is perceptible, experienceable as a given, appearance." Brands appear as experienceable fiction. Once again we remember: In global commodity markets, people choose between H&M and Louis Vuitton, between Fiat and Porsche. All of these brands help/force us to locate ourselves and find our way in a hyper-complex world. Brand interprets reality with a product or service in a typical way. Only then does it become visible in an infinite number of natural and man-made living organisms. These are—as Beer described—in a constant balancing act between reproduction and adaptation. 

Brand systems are living organisms in a constant balancing act between reproduction and adaptation. Perceptible living organisms are referred to as Gestalt in sociology.

The Gestalt body of the organization results from the fact that the performance system is coordinated with each other in its perceptions—brought together to form a unit. An example: In addition to high-quality material processing, at Louis Vuitton the handbags are only handled by the salespeople with white cotton gloves. The bags are presented singly and not hung in 100 copies on a stand. All of these components are brought together to form an aesthetic unit. They force a judgment that locates Louis Vuitton in luxury and makes the price appear indisputable. In order to systematically control the brand organism, we differentiate it into an operational—and a strategic level. The operational level is responsible for everyday business. It consists of the resource level, the management level and the implementation level. All three areas are in a constant feedback loop:

sto

Cu

r me

ack

db fee

Collection of all perceptible events and developments

Influence level

Implementation of decisions and measures

Implementation level

Preservation and development of the specific organizational pattern (e.g. nation, brand, family) "Style, typology, creative idea " Objective " Preservation, development

Gestalt systemics

Feedback

A Day-to-day business decisions and management

Management level

tion

Shape of the organiza

Strategic level

Operational level

Fig. 3.1 Own illustration: Brand as a living organism Graphic: Lukas Dier, Oliver Errichiello and Marius Wernke

Tren

ds

Environmental conditions

Available resources and competences e.g. production, development, research

Resource level

ers

Reality

Existence of all perceptible possibilities

ast Dis

26 3  The Cybernetics—Basic Understanding

3.5  Controlling the Brand as a Living System

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Implementation, review, optimization. This process serves the continuous further development of everyday business, without questioning the fundamental success factors. It secures Beer’s viability of the organism to adapt to changing environmental conditions without complications. The resource level has the task of organizing, producing and further developing the available resources. This includes the areas of production, development and research. They serve the self-similar incremental development. It is the intensification of processes and procedures during everyday business. The resource level maps Module 1 according to Stafford Beer, in which the foundation for successful ability and action is created. Here the performances become tangible. The product and service are created. The goods are positioned and systematically anchored in the minds of people by advertising and communication. The ultimate goal is to build habit structures and to establish one or two positive prejudices concerning the brand. All measures are designed to increase value creation by building on the differentially pronounced habits and positive prejudices of people. The management level serves to free up the employees in the creation of their daily work, to secure them and to support them in their best performance. It is noteworthy in the further development of cybernetic logic that the management of the organization deliberately subordinates itself. This also means that the management serves the system, not vice versa. It can be strategically useful to link the organization with a figurehead who appears publicly to make the organization appear more visionary, human or female. Examples are: Steve Jobs (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) or Elon Musk (Tesla). The management represents Stafford Beer’s Module 2: Orienting and Coordinating. The management uses the information from Module 1 and conveys it to Module 3. The implementation level realizes all the ideas and measures developed. And thus forms Module 3 from Stafford Beer: Organizing, Managing and Optimizing. The implementation level measures the resonance and success of each measure in the realization. The strategic level serves to protect and stabilize the organization’s daily engine. It is oriented towards the Modules 4 and 5 created by Beer. For this reason, environmental changes, trends, disasters and customer feedback must always be evaluated strategically first. To do this, all these external factors are collected and evaluated in the field of influence level and, if necessary, passed on to the management. Each external influence goes through the process of being embedded in the organization in a brand-specific way. This partly authoritarian task falls to the systemics of form. It is primarily used to maintain customer patterns and at the same time allow enough change to adapt the brand to the zeitgeist. It is so important for branding

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because it ensures that the brand is kept as the special and incomparable one and further developed. Apple, Disney or Miele. They all have to make their specific organizational pattern experienced in every brand encounter. This is ensured by the Gestalt system in every sub-area inside and outside the brand. The Gestalt system always follows the same pattern: It picks up the style, the typology and the creative idea of the brand. It defines the ideal target position. In the last step, the respective performance or element is integrated into the company by preserving and developing the brand. 

From this variety of services provided by this living organism, a specific brand body results. This brand body is systematically manageable.

3.6 Excursus: When Theory Became Practice—The “Cybersyn” Project On November 12, 1971, the newly elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, and Stafford Beer met—an unusual appointment between the socialist politician and the cybernetic scientist and renowned management consultant. Previously, the "Unidad Popular", a democratically oriented socialist coalition led by Allende, had won the majority in elections and was on its way to driving forward the transformation of society and economy. The topic of the conversation between Allende and Beer is the control of the Chilean economy on the basis of a new cybernetic model under the name “Cybersyn” (or “Synco” in Spanish). It is about nothing less than the cybernetic control of the previously nationalized Chilean companies to be implemented within a very short time. The data should bring order to chaos and overthrow a leaden bureaucracy—Beer formulated: “The answer is data-feed”. This prospect led the British magazine Observer on January 7, 1973, to the headline: “Chile run by Computer”. The core of the control instrument is Beers’s VSM, which is supposed to make the economy flexible to the needs of the population. Allende, a medical doctor by profession, can understand the biologically based thinking and functionality in a comprehensible way. Years later, Beer commented on these moments: “I explained the whole damned plan and the whole viable system model in one single sitting—and I’ve never worked with anybody at the high level who understood a thing I was saying” (quoted after Medina 2006, p. 572). In addition, the

3.6  Excursus: When Theory Became Practice—The “Cybersyn” Project

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project has a “real-time” information system (“liberty machine”) and a structure of semi-autonomous reporting systems that should be able to adapt flexibly to the environment. This led to the so-called Cybernet, a network of telex machines that connected the companies of Chile and the individual economic indicators, production figures and needs to the central IBM mainframe in Santiago de Chile. In complete contrast to the centralist and inflexible models of state economy in the Soviet Union and its partner states, Allende relies on the direct and immediate participation of companies and employees (so-called “peaceful way to socialism”). Allende particularly likes the focus on Module 5 in Beer’s model: “Identity and goal” of the “living system of Chilean economy” is for him “el pueblo” (the people), as Beer later explains. After Allende supported the project and asked Beer to push it forward, a concrete control instrumentarium emerged in a short time, which, in addition to many technically computer-aided innovations, led to a so-called "Opsroom", which to this day iconically condensed the cybernetic approach (design by the German designer Gui Bonsiepe). The Opsroom was the control center, or “the brain” of the Chilean economy, in which all information from all nationalized companies of the country was systematized, so that Beer emphasized that it was “not science fiction, it is science fact” (Beer 1973, 21). The Opsroom was never put into operation for its actual tasks. After completion, Beer points out that “Cybersyn” will only work if the system actors, that is, the people, accept this living system as a system and learn to deal with and work with it. In practice, however, Medina points out that this claim was not met: The means and instruments turned out to be too complicated in handling and control (computer-supported systems were still largely unknown in everyday life until the end of the 1980s), but also the Cybersyn responsible were not able to interpret the information received in a meaningful way, to relate it to the particularities of the respective industries in order to control it adequately. On the morning of September 11, 1973, the Chilean military, under the leadership of General Alfonso Pinochet, staged a coup. Allende and his closest collaborators died—a democratic civil society ceased to exist. In the following weeks, the military tried to understand the “Cybersyn” system, finally, the Opsroom was dismantled. The cybernetic project disappeared from the Chilean and world collective memory for many years. Stafford Beer was deeply affected by these experiences and memories. He withdrew from public life for 10 years and in the following years campaigned for social and ecological balance within the world community and—very forwardlooking for the 1980s—for a planned and resource-saving economy.

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References Adam M (2001) Lebensfähigkeit sozialer Systeme. Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model im Vergleich. Dissertation an der Universität St. Gallen Beer S (1973) Fanfare for effective freedom. The third Richard Goodman memorial lecture. http://www.kybernetik.ch/dwn/Fanfare_for_Free-dom.pdf. Accessed 27 Sept 2020 Beer S (1979) Heart of the enterprise. Wiley, Chichester Beer S (1981) Brain of the firm. Wiley, Chichester Beer S (1985) Diagnosing the system for organizations. Wiley, Chichester Binning G (1997) Aus dem Nichts. Über Kreativität von Natur und Mensch. Piper, München Malik F (2006) Systemisch-kybernetisches Management und die Bedeutung von Marken. In: Deichsel A, Meyer H (eds) Jahrbuch Markentechnik 2006/2007. Deutscher Fachverlag, Frankfurt/M Medina E (2006) Designing freedom, regulating a nation: socialist cybernetics in Allende’s Chile. J Lat Am Stud Camb „Wirklichkeit” auf Duden online. https://www.duden.de/node/206266/revision/503219. Accessed 29 Jan 2022

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The Brand as a Alliance

A brand is an old, but still very relevant form of human assembly based on an idea. The phenomenon of a brand cannot be uniquely explained from a business perspective A business perspective only sketches the surface, the effects of a situation and is therefore not able to decode the causal mechanisms and dynamics of the brand system. It is therefore important to distinguish between cause and effect. Because people almost never act in the sense of the “homo oeconomicus”: rationally and deliberately. People are almost never just “consumers”. People choose, weigh and enjoy the purchase decision. Every consumption decision therefore integrates social and psychological factors in addition to rational considerations: We always see much more in a product or service than just the pure utility value, but also the (perceived) exchange value. If Karl Marx was right about one thing, it was this: Goods are commodities that have been objectified. Products or services are not lifeless; they are charged with ideas, attributions and images. In other words: Goods are only objectified as subjects; only when they mean something to us do they exert an attraction. 

The human being is not exclusively an absolutely rational consumer, but chooses his goods and services according to the principle of pleasure.

A successful company is characterized by a unique and unmistakable culture. Normally, our understanding of culture is shaped by artistic achievements in painting or music, but this way of looking is too short-sighted. Culture is, from a scientific point of view, first and foremost a human-creaton that is maintained and developed. Culture is like how you eat, what you cook, how you celebrate or build your houses. Culture is also how a brand interprets a product segment. A tabloid interprets reality differently than "The Times". The respective culture or © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2022 O. Errichiello and M. Wernke, Order in Chaos - Cybernetics of Brand Management, Springer essentials, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65958-8_4

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the genetic code of a brand forms the so-called intangible value of a company, the attraction of a social structure. Brands structure social reality through their ideas. Brands structure markets by causing a differentially large number of people to ask for money in return. The prices paid produce a quantifiable form of economic value creation as a product of quantity x price x time. The price is therefore precisely the know-how to transfer social value creation into economic value creation. The analysis of the organization of systems with respect to each other, but especially in their internal life processes, is an exciting task. The following applies: There is hardly any system that appears more universal in today’s age than the brand. Brands are normative idea creatures of the world. And this has been the case ever since people have been trading: Brands are not a new phenomenon, even if the terms and fashion terms that are associated with the brand suggest something else. Although the meaning and design may differ greatly from our current ideas of a brand, characteristics already appeared more than 2000 years ago that still characterize the living system brand today (Errichiello 2017). 

Brands are determinants of human civilization. Their function and mechanisms of action have not changed structurally since people have been trading.

The problem is that today’s economy can hardly adequately and, above all, processually map social value creation. This is only logical if one tries to explain a social phenomenon primarily on the basis of microeconomic indicators and parameters. Instead, one must approach economic reality not (only) through point-based and constantly “innovative” market segmentation models, but (above all) through a sound structure and process analysis. In this way it turns out that social coexistence (to which the economy also belongs) takes place across time, disciplines or industries according to certain patterns or in certain structural units—similar to the patterns documented by the railway station camera mentioned at the beginning of this booklet. Focusing on “action and process units” allows for a dedicated analysis of the status quo, the shortcomings, bottlenecks or optimization options of a system. It becomes clear that companies not only send signals to (however ominously) a market, but also cause actions between companies and humans and thus structure—their actual economic playing field. This playing field even extends to the point where people are unhappy without a specific product or a specific vacation destination. That is: Companies condition interactions. Economic processes condition deepest feelings. The carrier of this interaction is the brand, which in its

4.1  The Brand as a Living System

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fundamental power today is able to overcome times, cultures and political systems. The brand is a social structuring instrument that encompasses both the company and the public and makes observing and acting in markets controllable. Brands as idea systems are not an end in themselves, but their persistence and stability requires their specific system to maintain and expand. 

Brands are idea creatures that segment the environment into recognizable units.

4.1 The Brand as a Living System If cybernetics controls living systems, then one of the most complex idea organisms of our time is the brand. Of course, only if the brand is considered more deeply than a “protectable sign” or an “image carrier” beyond a classical economic-legal focus. The brand is multi-layered and at the same time as present as hardly any other economic object. Brands are assets—in some cases the brand is the actual value of a company. (Statista 2020). The value of a digital platform such as Airbnb or Facebook cannot be explained by the stock of machines, hotels or “hard goods” (because there are almost none), but solely by a fact that the brand sociology calls a “positive prejudice”. These brands have an exorbitantly high value to their factual immovable goods, because they have succeeded in anchoring certain expectations and habits, sometimes globally collective. What applies to global brands also applies to small businesses: when selling a successful restaurant, the owner sells more than chairs, tables and pots. In the best case, the lessee “passes on” his positive prejudices, which he has gained through good performance, to the successor in the heads of the guests. So he sells calculation security through sales probabilities. Brand power is therefore not a question of economic size. The brand presents itself as one, if not the most effective lever to convey values in highly complex markets, to secure opportunities and to mitigate risks. Brands represent a factual financial value—Value of Brand Equity. When selling, the proceeds can be many times the value shown in the balance sheet. So it is profitable to have the positive prejudice associated with the brand and the expected profits. Two paradigms have emerged for assessing value. A purely financial perspective that is based on past, present and possible future cash flows and secondly

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the behavioral perspective that measures, for example, the awareness and familiarity on the basis of customer surveys and calculates a brand value (cf. Hellmann 2019). The aim is to work out the findings in the field of “ habit values” and to instrument them in a planned manner. For a long time, the brand has been the “great unknown” as part of the company in the specific discourse of classical economics. In the context of “hard facts” and KPIs, what a brand is is considered to be highly complex. If the entrepreneurial and academic everyday life is otherwise characterized by figures, evidence and references, the brand escapes the determining numerical logic to a large extent. What is sustainable? What is the value of a brand? What is a brand at all? In times of a dedicated digital market analysis, the "social alliance system" brand seems antiquated and at best complicated as an object of business administration. This is where the affinity to cybernetics lies, which escapes a completely mechanistic functional principle of living systems and tries to systemically grasp the “interactive in-between”. To a certain extent, a brand sociological approach seems foreign to the classical economic point of view. Because large parts of contemporary science try to reduce phenomena to numerical explanatory parameters. The macro sociologist Steffen Mau describes the structural effects of quantification as the leading philosophy of late modernity in his considerations: “Numbers offer an—often very convincing—answer to our need for objectification, relevance to the matter and rationalization. Although numbers abstract from concrete social contexts, they are not just mathematics. They are based on value assignment processes that give the numbers meaning or ‘value’. Quantifications can therefore be seen as manifest forms of value attribution, which is why it is not only interesting that quantifications are made, but also how and by whom” (Mau 2017, p. 29). Brands are interesting as assets because, as great unknowns, they have the potential to change the market situation in a chance-rich way. 

Figures can only inadequately describe the actual nature of a brand. The actual reasons for the anchoring in people’s heads are not clear.

4.2 Collective Performance Expectations Brands are not only carriers of culture or the means of economic transactions. They are primarily the result of a systematic, but also spontaneous organization of feedback processes for anchoring certain collective attributions of achievement.

4.2  Collective Performance Expectations

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The brand is therefore a network of relationships—every detail has a function (s). Everything is important and of equal value. What we call a brand is, analytically speaking, a dense network that, in terms of form and expression, is no less than any other living organic system. Physicist Hermann Haken pointed out the ordering function of the brand and developed four premises that specifically condition the systemic character of the brand as a feedback organism. Haken assumed that brands functioned particularly systemically, that is, they macroscopically ordered, because a) People influence people. Because a brand (in its respective action radius) has many customers, it conditions the behavior of many people. b) Brands collectively influence opinions via internal networks (conversations, personal recommendations) as well as launched networks (advertising). c) Advertising is arbitrarily controllable and regulatable and therefore develops its own dynamics. d) Brands are themselves subject to entrepreneurial regulation and adaptation and adjust to the purchasing behavior of their customers. The “hyper-offer of choice” in late modernity runs through the everyday life of every person in all areas of life—structurally transdisciplinary and permanently. The furnishing of the apartment, the type of muesli on the dining table, the podcast, the means of transport to the workplace are incredibly diverse in their choice. All more or less conscious decisions that constitute each person in terms of the composition of his selection to an “I”. By driving a Porsche, reading the Guardian, feeding ourselves exclusively vegan and wearing a Coldplaysweater, we create an “image of the other”. None of these things and attributes we have invented ourselves, but each of them radiates an individuality that we compose to an overall assessment with regard to the personality of the other. On the one hand, many people complain about the “brand terror” and the secret psychological seduction techniques, on the other hand we define ourselves and how we want to be seen by brands—by choosing certain brands or explicitly against them. Because the message of a brand is understood by everyone (sometimes worldwide) in fractions of a second. Brands exist time- and culturespanning. Brands are a cultural phenomenon and psychological means of self-definition. Our ego results to a large extent from purchasable things. They give us the opportunity to locate ourselves and to be located: I buy to be recognized. Goods and services are based on the creative spirit of individual people or anchored cultures, that is, generations that have passed on know-how. Specialties or even the pride of a place are transferred into a product. By drinking wine from

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Bordeaux, we participate in this specificity, make it our own. The individuality of the individual, a group or a location and his or its development talents and make every object unique. If it were not unique, it would not be recognizable. Because only what is different is perceptible at all. 

The results of human and cultural creativity are available to people as options for participation and thus as options for sharpening the ego.

The brand gives the opportunity to be the person we believe ourselves to be. We always recognize ourselves and our idea of a successful life in the choice of brand, but in a projected and aestheticized form. A brand acts immediately. The purchase of fair trade mineral water—clearly visible in our shopping cart—makes us world savers. It gives us the opportunity to dive into a world of brands, to slip into it, without questioning ourselves, because the choice of the shell does not require any justification. A “I like it” is nowadays an anarchic act of self-assertion. A rejection of a world of constant logic and reason, of justification and differentiated argument. The "liking judgement" is a pre-modern form of decision and therefore so powerful. In its narrowing to itself, it explodes the idea that things can be clearly grasped and decided as a result. There is no reason for 150 mass-produced car brands, 3000 different mineral waters or millions of coffee stores except the one that people “like it”. That is why the liking judgement today is one of the most important economic factors in an individualism-oriented world. The brand is a return to a time of the individual, of the self-centered, of the absolute, which escapes rational logic. Brands as anchors of subjectivity become more and more important, the more the human being—as the philosopher Martin Heidegger put it—is lost in a world that is structured, organized and closely led: The modern human being is cheated of his ability to ecstasy, which conjures up and fuels his own will to decide out of the feeling of loneliness. By existing in various ways and closing itself off to rationality, a brand acts as a present stabilizer and suggests autonomy. Brand affects a self-controlled mass of individuals who do not want to be a mass. They connect and separate at the same time. The brand is an unambiguous statement; it is totalitarian, but in the multitude of different brands that we choose for ourselves, a space finally emerges between a variety of symbols, contents, and biographies that allow for a personal statement. Brands are stability and spontaneous impulse at the same time, against the background of supra-individual fashions that (co-)determine our sense of feeling. The brand is a mean that allows us to make an individual decision in almost every area. Brands are, one may judge it critically, “personality developers”

4.3  The Authentication of Everyday Life

37

because they provide the material that our own “aesthetic sense” provides the “building blocks”. This explains the increasing importance and relevance of the brand (Errichiello 2018). But the brand can only be a “building block” if it repeatedly confirms its specificity. As a result, over time, people develop a collective performance expectation for a securing design of their ego. The organization that manages to meet this aligned expectation over the long term will be rewarded with trust and loyalty. A positive prejudice has arisen in an object or service.

4.3 The Authentication of Everyday Life So if modernity has been characterized since the beginning of the industrial revolution 200 years ago by enabling standardizations in the form of mass production, late modernity tries to avoid the impression of "standard" in all fields. This applies to product worlds, but is also part of the mentalities and emotional worlds. What is perceived as valuable and desirable is what has an affective attraction, especially because it seems real, special, rare, original or unique. This process can be aptly described with the term “authentication”. The small restaurant with typical dishes, the farm that rents rooms, the old car or motorcycle that has been restored, the wine not only from a special location, but also from a special vintage, the legendary Coldplay concert in the London Natural History Museum, the Gründerzeit apartment in the composer’s district, the homemade jam, the cheese from a Greek mountain village—the modern human being is always looking for something that sets his own existence apart and differentiates it from “the others”, the masses. The aesthetic sense, i.e. the pleasure, becomes the criterion for the evaluation—the more (positive) feelings a commodity arouses, the more valuable it is. Psychologically, the commodity thus closes the gap that has arisen after the comprehensive rejection of transcendental life goals (“leading a life pleasing to God”) and the disenchantment of the world on a mass scale: If the meaning of life does not begin in the kingdom of heaven, but is limited to the earthly lifespan of a good 80 years, then it is necessary to realize the meaning of action in the here and now. What is a “successful life” based on this? It is mainly fed by the idea that one leads a self-determined and autonomous existence—individualizable products and services are the elements that enable self-determination. This change in mental disposition becomes economically relevant because it now allows individualization and culturalization in micro format through technical developments. Through the platform economy and its associated information models, products and services can be digitally controlled and formatted—individualiza-

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tion is today technically simple. However, the individualized product only makes sense if it is understood collectively and correctly, i.e. particularly, assigned. An organic yogurt only makes sense if, when the figure “organic” is mentioned, immediate specific, aligned associations and attributions become effective. Special products therefore require a uniform collective classification, they are “collectively special”. The brand therefore acts as a local, regional, sometimes even global interpretation community. As goods they compete with each other: Which provider succeeds in achieving the highest affectivity? Since the value parameter is emotionally based, the modern digital economy always holds surprises in terms of the success or failure of a product. What is pleasing can never be predicted with all certainty—feelings are not yet fully controllable despite all instrumentation. The response to something happens collectively usually abruptly and unforeseeably. The task of a system that wants to develop and spread is to anchor and reinforce the perception of an alleged peculiarity of a mass product through forms of narration and gestural framing. Only a fraction of the products of the cereal provider MyMuesli are actually individualized by the customers, Nike and Adidas sell self-designed sneakers in the promille range, standardized package holidays are stable at 50% (across all age groups). It becomes clear: In brand management it is not about the actual production of individual products, but about the communication of the possibilities of individualization—which are rarely accepted and realized in practice. 

A brand as security requires a state of permanent feedback and protection. In brand economy it is mainly about illustrating an individualizable potential and sharpening the brand profile. However, in the reality of mass markets it is hardly accepted by people.

4.4 Trust as a Social Power Field The goal of all brand activities is to make people trust a performance idea collectively and individually. What does trust mean? Trust means that a specific object evokes certain expectations. Trust does not arise “somehow” and not through the illustration of “trust” in the sense of beautiful pictures and a mantra-like invocation (“Trust us!”). Trust is a normative obligation relationship—a social process: It only arises when a company acts in a reliable manner and consistently and similarly fulfills the predicted performances. Simple and difficult at the same time.

4.4  Trust as a Social Power Field

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In an increasingly unverifiable market, it is necessary to secure advances of trust and to become or remain recognizable. This means working out the expected performance specification in a concrete manner and steering it. Advertising and design have the task of spreading information as comprehensively as possible and structuring trust through recognition. The brand thus presents a reliable offer to the public by means of advertising. Niklas Luhmann, founder of system theory, defined: “In the act of trust, the complexity of the future world is reduced. The trusting person acts as if there were only certain possibilities in the future.” (2000, p. 24) And: “Trust is exaggerated information, it is based on the fact that the trusting person is already familiar with certain basic information, already informed, but not dense enough, not complete, not reliable.” (2000, p. 40). The more chaotic and faster the world, the greater the yearning for certainties and the familiar. Economics is interaction, shaped by the “in-between”, i.e. the interdependence and relationship of individual people or groups to each other. Economics with itself would not be possible. Because the exchange requires the dialogue between two different actors. This form of interaction makes—in addition to the actual object exchange—the economy to a social process that is suitable to eliminate the feeling of isolation and separation from the rest of the world. Now the actual fuel for the triumph of the brand, as a social creature, becomes clearer. Trust as a social category can also be understood as a self-reinforcing process: By observing the behavior of other people in relation to a good, imitation effects are imprinted, which—depending on the proportion of people involved— determine the structure of the market. In order to build trust in an offer, it requires irritation-free positive experiences. If a brand maintains its appearance in typical quality, language, optics in certain stores over decades, a clear image is polarized in the minds of the people. The positive prejudice, which is created by experience, is constitutive for the existence of a brand. A brand exists when there is consensus in the relevant public about the characteristics of the offer. 

The social dynamics of trust-building are at the center of any long-term brand development. Such an approach starts with the causes of brand formation and does not try to follow fashions or trends. Brand management based on brand sociology is timeless because the underlying complex social dynamics are cultural laws.

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4.5 The Shape as a Folder of the Brand System A brand is a systemic performance composition of all fields that are directly or indirectly experienced by the public (this includes not only the product and advertising level, but everything that is associated with the brand, even if it is not intended by the company). These performance expressions are the effects of the normative regulations and style interpretations of a company. From the multitude of perceptions, impressions or ideas, an individual, but above all a collectively shared idea develops into a shape composition, which can never be empirically reproduced in its concrete elements. Each brand is an individual system that is self-similar and unfolded on the basis of its typology with the aim of value creation. Klaus Brandmeyer and Thomas Otte already write in 1992: “A brand is […] a living system that is formed by an infinite number of subsystems and kept in motion […]. Brand therefore means a system in which people and things, mind and matter are interconnected to form a shapely whole and interact with each other” (Brandmeyer and Otte 1992, p. 27). Brand is thus the result of a performance history that has been provided in a typical way over longer periods of time and that results in a clear idea in the public. Brand is therefore a resonance space that is similarly filled with knowledge, experience, memories, prejudices, associations, hearsay and advertising for many people. Otte is convinced: “Depending on the temporal and spatial extension of a brand, these ideas are shared by many hundreds of thousands or millions of people. Not only the customers, but also the manufacturers, retailers and advertising managers of a brand are infinitely connected to each other through a similar idea of it. They form a large system in which the acting individuals act and interact as subsystems including the brand products. This makes brand systems [sic!] characterised as living systems” (Otte 1995, p. 43). As a result, a collectively shared opinion about a brand arises, which—if it is to be economically effective—is positively connoted for a certain group. 

A brand is a complex social alliance that is characterized by specific design guidelines. Brand relevance is therefore more than the result of rational assessment criteria and benefit considerations. Ideally, a brand fulfills two to three specific promises with each purchase transaction and thus stabilizes an orienting image or an idea in the minds of people.

A psychological process takes place that autonomously combines signals that occur in a way that deviates from the stimulus itself to form a meaningful over-

4.5  The Shape as a Folder of the Brand System

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all impression. So when we look at a landscape, we see not only countless color signals, figures and shapes, but we see a “particularly beautiful landscape”. The meaning-giving of our impressions also plays a significant role from a medicalneurological perspective. Eric Kandel, Nobel Prize winner for medicine, formulated the following finding: “We rely on our senses to provide us with accurate information so that our perception and our actions are based on an objective reality. But that is only part of the truth. The senses do provide the brain with the information it needs to act, but they do not present the brain with an objective reality. Rather, they provide the brain with the information it needs to construct [sic!] reality. Each sense-giving arises from a different system in the brain and each of these systems is finely tuned to perceive and interpret a specific aspect of the outside world. The impressions arriving at the sense organs are picked up by cells that are designed to pick up even the weakest noise, the lightest touch or movement, and then forwarded via a dedicated pathway to a brain region that is specialized for the respective sense organ. The brain analyzes the impressions, adds relevant emotions and memories of previous experiences, and constructs from all of this an inner image of the outside world. This—partly unconscious, partly conscious—self-generated reality forms the guideline for our thoughts and our behavior” (Kandel 2018, pp. 18–19). Kandel points out that social interaction and understanding are possible because the development of the human brain has taken place in a similar way: “In the brain of each person, the same neuronal circuits form the basis for the same mental processes” (ibid.). This sense-giving or gestalt quality is “more and different than the sum of its parts” (so-called "Ehrenfels criterion"). The brand as a figure acts as a “hyperorganism”. What is meant by that? Uber, Nestle or Hello Fresh—nobody has ever met these organizations personally or could say what they are specifically about. It is impossible to define these objects in all their details, yet we act with them effortlessly and daily. A brand is such a hyperorganism that combines all the characteristics of a performance body into one overall image. Mostly it is these abstract collective ideas that determine the actual value of the brand. What is decisive is: the communication between people is only made possible by the generalization on the basis of a collective shared content core. Imagine what it would mean if we did not have a “picture” of countries, regions, people or companies at all—automatically, without having to think long about it, perhaps even without having made a real experience with them: wine from France, fashion from Italy, machines from Germany, “I find what I’m looking for at Google”, you get to know the destination much more authentically through Airbnb and Louis Vuitton is luxury—attributions of form that are based on own and also on hearsay experiences.

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The information character of a system therefore only arises from the performances that form and repeat it. If a sender does not develop a typology and characteristic, no pattern, no message and thus no orientation arises in the flood of information. As a “condensed sense” (Luhmann), an organization sends out certain, preferably redundant messages. A collective image arises. The repeating promise of reliability ensures a higher speed of communication in effect, and thus enables the sender to optimize his own assertiveness in the competition for attention. Just as there are certain symbols in relation to cultures, our fund of ideas also comprises brands in the modern age. Therefore: brands focus on complexity and at the same time increase the speed of decision-making. This statement is the actual mental transition to a theory of the “shape system brand”. An idea life form is a system that consists of a creative idea and finally develops and organizes itself on the basis of a concrete genetic code. In terms of the brand, the preservation of systematized order processes is the mechanism that prevents the shape dissolution and the positive prejudice against a brand in the public. For brand sociology, these resistant, stabilizing and energetic abilities of positive prejudices are decisive. They are instruments to successfully lead economic bodies in the market and to anchor specific performances collectively in the long term. Brands create positive prejudices that are shared collectively and structure the self-regulation of a community, anchor habitual patterns and reduce the criticism of the only partially rational individual with regard to a matter. 

Brand acts as a recognizable shape or, to use the terminology of brand sociology, self-similar. Because shape only arises when the actions are “typical”. Self-similarity exists when every manifestation of life or every element of a system represents the basic principle of the organism—currently and in the future.

References Brandmeyer K, Otte, T (1992) Marken I: Lebende Systeme mit Dynamik. Harvard- manager, 3/1992, Hamburg Errichiello O (2017) Philosophie und kleine Geschichte der Marke. Gabler, Wiesbaden Errichiello O (2018) Einsamkeit und die psychologische Kraft der Marke. Springer Nature, Berlin

References

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Hellmann KU (2019) Marke als Kommunikation und Metaprodukt. Sozialwissenschaftliche Grundlagen der Markenführung. In: Esch F-R (ed) Handbuch Markenführung. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden Kandel E (2018) Was ist der Mensch? Störungen des Gehirns und was sie über die menschliche Natur verraten. Siedler, München Luhmann N (2000) Vertrauen. Ein Mechanismus der Reduktion sozialer Komplexität. UTB, Stuttgart Mau S (2017) Das metrische Wir. Über die Quantifizierung des Sozialen. Suhrkamp, Berlin Otte T (1995) Die Selbstähnlichkeit der Marke. In: Deichsel A, Otte T (eds) Jahrbuch Markentechnik 1995. Deutscher Fachverlag, Frankfurt a. M.

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Perspectives of a Cybernetic Brand Management

In a digital and highly dynamic world of goods and goods, it is necessary to develop a systematic understanding of brands. The task of managing living systems is challenging for start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises and global corporations alike. Start-ups usually try to solidify their concepts in a value-creating way. Often, a rapid, exponential scaling is decisive for the viability of a new entrepreneurial idea. In particular, in the case of digital business models, there are brilliant skills in the mastery of trivial systems: programming languages, software or artificial intelligence, they are all designed for technical scalability. Here, the perfect implementation of binary codes counts: 1 or 0. However, in view of the exponential development and, in particular, the subsequent anchoring of brands, the focus must be on the brand as a living system. Because every living system depends on the smooth interaction of people, groups and things. Only on this basis something unique can be created, especially in a digital competitive environment. The idea behind cybernetic brand management is to recognize, consolidate and develop patterns in chaotic and diffuse constellations. Only in this way is it possible (especially in times of communication chaos) to anchor collective habitual patterns and at the same time to create the necessary space for innovation. Through digitalization, climate-specific challenges as well as pandemics and economic crises of global proportions, we are in a universal transformation process of society and economy. In this constellation, new players position themselves in order to gain the most value-creating and price-stable starting positions. At the same moment, solidly anchored medium-sized enterprises and global corporations are under pressure to face these transformation processes and to defend their top positions.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2022 O. Errichiello and M. Wernke, Order in Chaos - Cybernetics of Brand Management, Springer essentials, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65958-8_5

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5  Perspectives of a Cybernetic Brand Management

This dynamics requires an understanding of structural brand management. Neither the motivation of the employees nor the attractiveness of a performance idea can be commanded. However, it is possible to systematically favor and strengthen the attractiveness of a brand as a interaction system. For this purpose, it is necessary to organize structural causes and analytically evaluate effects—in the spirit of the intellectual heritage of Stafford Beer and many other cyberneticians. Brand cybernetics is therefore the attempt to develop brands into individual power centers on a large and small scale. Even if it corresponds to the current zeitgeist to clearly predict, regulate and ideally carry out all matters in an organization according to a comprehensive, prefabricated master plan—in time—it becomes clear: Strong brands are not machines, but networks that are able to remain specific even in the context of change and adaptation. Brand cybernetics constructively organizes favorable chaos. Cybernetics is the attempt to cope with increasing complexity by action corridors in which the system itself is organized and allows for autonomous adaptation development. So it’s about the ability to understand spontaneous orders as necessary adaptation development and to make them usable. Lets say it in one sentence: Prototypes are easy, production is hard … brand-cybernetics solve it smart.

What You Can Take Away From This essential

• What is meant by cybernetics • Why brands are “living systems” • How to analyze and manage highly complex organizations and their dynamics (e.g. companies/brands) • What the basic laws of cybernetic brand management are • How management cybernetics emerged as a science

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2022 O. Errichiello and M. Wernke, Order in Chaos - Cybernetics of Brand Management, Springer essentials, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65958-8

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