There's this term in game design called juice. It's not the story, not the mechanics, just the tiny feedback stuff: the sound when you grab a coin, the little screen shake when you land a hit. Does nothing functionally, just makes the moment feel good.

And I think about that a lot with brands, because it's the same instinct as good environmental storytelling. You walk into a room, there's a burnt letter and an empty chair, and you just know what happened. Nobody told you. Most brands get this backwards, they'd rather explain themselves on an about us page than build the story into the actual experience.

This is where I'd like to take branding to, treating it like world building. Instead of being some kind of meta narrative on top, you build the room, the objects inside, the little details so that the message is implicit, not explicit, and no one needs to be talked through it.