Today's lead news story: evangelical preacher in Florida threatens to torch the Quran.  Next in the queue: the "revelation" from Consumer Reports that most store-brand products are as good as or better than their "national brand" counterparts. 

Pretty much everything we need to know about brands captured in two headline news events.  Let's start with The Reverend Terry Jones who, leading a church of fifty apparently lost souls, ignites a worldwide fury.  A brilliant example of the impact that a single person with a provocative idea can have in a totally interconnected, always-on world.  And a vivid display of the power of belief in moving people to do irrational (if too often misguided) things.

The store-brand story offers complementary insights.  The obvious insight:  the premium people pay for the "national brands" isn't driven by what's in the box.  It's driven by what's in the their hearts, by the subconscious comparisons they make when they see the national brand and the store brand side by side and choose to pay 10, 20, even 100% more for the "real thing."  Or, increasingly, when they choose not to.  Which is what happens when manufacturers, extorted by their customers or cynical about their consumers, take belief for granted.  People know when they're being played.  They'll go along to a point, because they want to believe.  But there's a point where it starts to unravel.

Maybe all of this is why we're all so in love with Apple and so bored by everyone else in the consumer electronics space.  Because Apple isn't about consumer electronics.  They are about delight and desire, about creating belief and emotional connection.  It's about knowing that the joy we get from looking at, holding and marveling over their constant flow of innovations makes it easy for us to forgive their often significant functional shortcomings.  It's about not letting what they make turn into store brands, refusing to let their telecom partners create a freebie to sell mobile subscriptions at the expense of the Apple brand.  It's about the courage to matter.