It appears that you are uninformed about this:
This has been a reference within apple culture for decades. Steve jobs could make you excited about the new slot-in cd player of an iMac. Not my words. It’s a way people talk about apple and Steve Jobs. I am sorry it offends you.
Yes, brands build trust. And I say this as an apple fanboy: What do you call it when a purchase decision is made by following a crowd instead of comparing the products?
I don’t know about you, but I see a lot of that, particularly in technology. Sometimes the result is a product that can’t actually achieve their stated goals. iPhones are awesome for a lot of people but there are things they don’t do well. If you need those things and still buy an iPhone… what is that?
There is a version of that happening in the Audio industry. And I think Focal and ZMF are more like Apple in that regard. That doesn’t make their products bad, probably on the contrary, they work for a lot of people. But it may mean the hype around them causes purchases by people that aren’t well matched to those products.
My interest here is to see how prevalent that is for these brands. I have a pretty good idea how prevalent it is for Apple (because I am the guy people turn to to fix it).
Note on Steve Jobs and Apple: His particular version of the “reality distortion field” had a way of making you crazy excited about things the product can do. It wasn’t so much leading people to think the product was better than it is (which there is plenty of marketing that does that). It was more about selling what it can do really really well.
I have tried so many times. Congratulations on succeeding! It’s been a losing battle for me.