On Corporate Worldbuilding
The concept of 'worldbuilding' is used primarily for the construction of fiction, especially fantasy, and to a slightly lesser extent, sci-fi. But worldbuilding is involved in all forms of storytelling. As an example:
I saw an ad recently for Coca-cola (incidentally, one of the last ads I ever saw, having recently found a competent universal ad-blocker), in which a man goes into a convenience store and buys a coke. That's about the entire content of the ad, but there was an interesting detail. Anyone who's been to a convenience store will know that usually two of its four walls are filled with coolers, one side of which has soft drinks (soda, juice and water), while the other has hard drinks (beer and maybe wine). In the ad, the same coolers were present, but 100% filled with coke. Not even diet coke or coke zero, just coke with the familiar red label, all turned with the writing outward.
This choice is motivated by the needs of the ad: showing alternative purchases, even in the background, might distract the audience from what you're selling, especially if what you show happens to be their preference. And for legal reasons, ads generally avoid mentioning or showing their rivals at all. But this has implications for the story that the ad is trying to tell.
The ad is presenting an artificial world to the audience: one in which coke is the only beverage product that exists, but (probably due to limited filming budget) the same volume of cooler presentation is still needed in stores. It's a strange world, and one that undercuts the ad's message: if coke is the only available product, it says nothing to show a person buying it. They have no other choice. In fact, in a world where coke is presented with such persistent fervor, it's hard to imagine a customer being especially enthusiastic about it. To them, coke and its unrelentingly cheerful packaging is an unchanging fact of life. How could anyone possibly feel strongly about it? If anything, they may be impelled to rebel against it.
So even minor changes in the world you present, made for practical reasons, can change the subtext of the narrative you convey. And no matter how realistic you want to be, alterations like this are going to occur, as a necessary result of whatever limitations happen to constrain your medium.
I saw an ad recently for Coca-cola (incidentally, one of the last ads I ever saw, having recently found a competent universal ad-blocker), in which a man goes into a convenience store and buys a coke. That's about the entire content of the ad, but there was an interesting detail. Anyone who's been to a convenience store will know that usually two of its four walls are filled with coolers, one side of which has soft drinks (soda, juice and water), while the other has hard drinks (beer and maybe wine). In the ad, the same coolers were present, but 100% filled with coke. Not even diet coke or coke zero, just coke with the familiar red label, all turned with the writing outward.
This choice is motivated by the needs of the ad: showing alternative purchases, even in the background, might distract the audience from what you're selling, especially if what you show happens to be their preference. And for legal reasons, ads generally avoid mentioning or showing their rivals at all. But this has implications for the story that the ad is trying to tell.
The ad is presenting an artificial world to the audience: one in which coke is the only beverage product that exists, but (probably due to limited filming budget) the same volume of cooler presentation is still needed in stores. It's a strange world, and one that undercuts the ad's message: if coke is the only available product, it says nothing to show a person buying it. They have no other choice. In fact, in a world where coke is presented with such persistent fervor, it's hard to imagine a customer being especially enthusiastic about it. To them, coke and its unrelentingly cheerful packaging is an unchanging fact of life. How could anyone possibly feel strongly about it? If anything, they may be impelled to rebel against it.
So even minor changes in the world you present, made for practical reasons, can change the subtext of the narrative you convey. And no matter how realistic you want to be, alterations like this are going to occur, as a necessary result of whatever limitations happen to constrain your medium.