Non-tech companies are getting sucked in, too - see, for example, the applications for .airliquide, .capitalgroup, .dinebrands, .massimodutti, .newbalance, .stubhub, .warhammer, .zarahome, and so on.

From what I've seen thus far, most brand TLDs never get used. (The only significant exception that comes to mind is .google, and even they never really committed to using it.) Who's been going around convincing these companies to apply for this round?

Google mainly uses .goog for infrastructure (from cloud, gclb, gke, pki, to printer.in) while .google is more of the about page of services.