These stories are so common, when I read it, I was thinking it was a precise description of my own brother. My brother who earns 6 times less than I purchases a 1000$ Samsung phone whereas I don't buy any phone at all and just use the handme-down from my wife, for 0$. It's a 5 year old iphone6 but still works Great. His other expenses are much lower though: for example, he has subsidized housing which means he pays almost nothing for rent. and he has no car, since he can bike to work.
Advertisment almost never works on me, so it's hard for me to imagine it's so effective on everyone else.
Name/brand recognition doesn't mean it "worked". In order for it to have worked, you need to actually spend money on the product or cause someone else to spend money on the product.
I'm reasonably certain that advertising works on most people, even if they don't realize it. Being told a modified and heavily-biased narrative of the world repeatedly, for literal hours a day is likely to have an effect, even if it's subtle.
Maybe you're one of the lucky people that advertising truly does not work on, and fair enough, but I seriously doubt that these big megacorporations would spend billions of dollars on ads if there weren't some measurable effect on a majority of people.
Advertisment almost never works on me, so it's hard for me to imagine it's so effective on everyone else.