As to the many good points you make about marketing, does that really have to happen from Steemit alone? Witnesses, app owners, authors... anyone in the community can put together larger marketing projects and seek funding to implement them.

I totally agree it does not need to come solely from Steemit, Inc. In fact, probably the best move Steemit, Inc. did for the whole platform was to lay off 70% of its staff and switch to survival mode. It clearly informed the rest of the stakeholders that:

When they emerged from "survival mode" there's no mention of STEEM Power. The final sticking point is the ninja-mine, but we can just just proceed as if they didn't have it. There's not much value in STEEM Power. It's not being marketed. It's a dead end unless someone else starts marketing it. And no one is marketing STEEM Power right now. So time to move on to Steem Engine based solutions or something else on the second layer.