It is estimated that Bose has spent more dollars on advertising last year than ALL other high-end companies COMBINED. Does it have an effect? Sadly, yes. A few years back, the United States Air Force signed Bose onto a multi-million-dollar contract to design noise cancellation headsets for Air Force flight crews. Bose won the contract over two other companies simply because of their "more established name" (brand recognition). The concept of a noise cancellation headset is to actively monitor the noise frequencies emitted from a jet engine and the turbulent wind, and reproduce the exact signal 180 degrees out of phase, thus theoretically canceling it out completely. Many reputable manufacturers have successful done so as well. Bose produced a model that cost approximately $1000 per unit, which failed to cancel out a significant amount of noise. The company used the contract as an opportunity to unload obsolete parts from years back. Bose pawned off thousands of outdated interface connectors for which there were no longer commercially available mating jacks, and incorporated them into the headsets. The Air Force, proud as it was, didn't scrap the project, but instead spent countless millions more replacing the consoles in a number of aircraft to make them compatible with the said headsets. In the end though, the Air Force did terminate the contract when test crews found that the headsets were ineffective and non-durable. This whole mess was created over a brand name's alleged reputation and prestige. Bose is now selling a downgraded version of these headsets to commercial airlines and to the consumer public. They now work to a minor degree, but are not surprisingly still easily outperformed by their competitors. These consumer market headsets are also very, very poorly crafted. I browse many online audio forums and have heard stories about these very expensive headsets falling apart prematurely.