Why Fictional Brands Exist and What Real Brands Should Learn

That’s because Lumen wasn’t designed to sell. It was designed to stand for something. As a viewer, you didn’t just see the logo, you probably felt the consequences of what it represented: corporate overreach, fractured identity, and existential dread… all in clean, minimalist Helvetica. TV shows and films don’t invent fictional brands to decorate the background. They invent them because they need something more powerful than a product or a setting. They need a belief system.

So why are so many real brands still treated like decoration?

The Creative Discipline Behind Fake Brands

In storytelling, brands are shortcuts. They signal values, systems, and ideologies. A fictional brand does what every real brand should: it compresses meaning into a symbol. But in fiction, there's no room for fluff and every brand has a job to do.

Writers and creators build these brands with intense purpose, asking themselves key questions:

• Clarity: What does this company do and what does it stand for?

• Conflict: How does it create tension in the story?

• Symbolism: What emotion or idea should the viewer associate with it?

• Longevity: Can it grow and evolve over seasons and plot twists?

  
  

This is the creative discipline often missing from a lot of brand briefs in the real world. The irony? The fake ones feel more real because they were built with a stronger narrative purpose than most actual brands.

The Jobs These Brands Do

Fictional brands aren't just logos on a wall. They are narrative engines that provoke the audience and drive the story forward.

Some brands drive the plot, with their very existence setting the story in motion. Without InGen, there are no cloned dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Without Oscorp, there is no conflict in Spider-Man. Others shape the world’s rules, defining the logic of their universe. The mysterious Dharma Initiative from Lost provides the setting and technology, while Rekall (Total Recall) defines the ethical lines of memory and reality.

Brands can also represent a larger theme. The innocent-looking chicken chain Los Pollos Hermanos from Breaking Bad becomes a facade for a criminal drug empire, symbolizing duality and deception. Similarly, Weyland-Yutani Corp. from the Alien franchise symbolizes corporate inhumanity and the drive for profit at any cost.

Finally, some brands act as hyperreal mirrors, reflecting and amplifying cultural tropes. The White Lotus Resorts from The White Lotus provide a backdrop where class tensions explode, and Waystar Royco (Succession) exposes the rot within legacy media empires and dynastic wealth. This extends to light-hearted series too, where Goliath National Bank (How I Met Your Mother) is a comic stand-in for soulless finance and corporate sellout culture.

These brands are antagonists, enablers, and satirical mirrors. They help the viewer feel something about the system itself, not just the characters within it.

Lessons for Real-World Brands

The lesson for real brands is simple: Treat creativity like a story engine. The creative discipline used to build a fictional brand is the exact same discipline you need to build a real one that lasts. It's about giving your brand a purpose so powerful, it feels inevitable.

So, how do you apply this to your brand?

• Don't just define what you do; define what you stand for. What is your brand's core belief?

• Don't just solve a problem; create a world. What is the world your brand is building or fighting against?

• Don't just attract an audience; provoke a response. What is the "conflict" you introduce to the market?

The most iconic fictional brands weren’t made to decorate a scene.They were built to do something: to challenge, expose, or hold a mirror up to something bigger.

Real brands should be built the same way.

Because a brand with real narrative weight doesn’t just exist in the background, it shapes the story and when done right outlasts even the purpose it was built for.