After thinking about it I have personally moved those BTS away from Polo and bought some cheap Brownies...

Definitely

One of the things we have worked hard to accomplish is elimination of any central points of coercion.  This has some of the disadvantages indicated by the OP, but it may be a cost worth paying.

Instead, we have evolved a system where devs can be hired independently, while on the marketing side, we have left the referral incentives in place to attract independent marketing initiatives that to a large extent don't need to be coordinated.

Let me explain.

We have a common backbone that all sorts of enterprises can build on.  In general, each can create a different marketing message to their customers, and wind up describing the benefits of a shared backbone any way they like.

The average consumer may not need to know much about the backbone, so we may not really need a unified public perspective on BitShares itself.  As long as guys like Ronny and all our other partners and independent entrepreneurs are out their explaining to the public the competitive benefits that their specific businesses are able to offer because they share a financial backbone with many other businesses, the essential marketing function of attracting, training, and servicing new users can go forward without much coordination.

The only thing they all need in common is some branding of the common backbone itself, like the "powered by BitShares" or "member of BitShares Exhange Network", since that fact is the universal common denominator that leads customers to appreciate a network effect.

But even that branding can be left to partners and entrepreneurs, each of whom can explain the benefits of the BitShares Network in terms their own customers will best understand. 

Our partners have huge incentives to do this custom tailored marketing and better understanding of their specific customers than any one-message-fits-all marketing could ever hope to achieve.

Hence, do we really need centralized marketing? 
Sure.  But not as much as we might first think.

Now marketing the possibilities to new partners is still a challenge, but even that can be done by a thousand uncoordinated evangelists reaching out to entrepreneurs everywhere with a custom message for each one of them.