I do not know anyone who respects Monero of its main weakness (lack of marketing).
Yes, Monero has been mentioned not only on crypto related media but also mainstream media.
The importance of marketing comes to play an important role when it comes to communicating Monero to the new people in laymen's language. Despite Amanda Johnson is a vocal Dark coin person I am not sure if people consider Dark coin as "Amanda Johnson coin"..
There are different type of adaption:
1) Speculation (short term buying and selling)
2) Bagholding (consider Monero as an asset and want to accumulate it as much as possible)
3) Transactional (buying illegal stuff mainly right now)
When communicating, all these aspects should be taken account, they all have different mindset and thus the approach should be different. Let's approach the people from their own perspectives.
I think I know where you come from: I used to worry about Monero not having marketing early 2016 but then it got accepted by the DNM, price went up and slowly down (oasis exit scam, no GUI). I then got worried again that we should market Monero but then price gradually went up with the release GUI, kraken, bitfinex echange accepting Monero. What makes people want marketing is fear and uncertainty that prices will go way down but I am positive that how Monero is advancing right now is not the wrong path to go.
What I want to say is that I used to believe that marketing was a must for Monero to spread but I am slowly believing it is not as it is a decentralized/open source project which is gradually developing. We still have more features to come and because it is an open source project, having suddenly many newcomers could do more harm than good to it. We should help fluffy with the adoption and awareness as best as we can and get people to be involved with it not as a buy-once-then-dump-and-not-get-involved-with-XMR-forever coin.
I believe the way to go for Monero as a decentralized and open source project is to expand as the same rate it is developing. Deep down inside, we all know that Monero is great, different than Bitcoin and that it is not going to disappear suddenly. Chances of Monero being replaced by another cryptocurrency is very slim as they would have to have continuous development and most likely start from scratch like Monero if they wanted to replace it.
Great post. I always say ( since 2014 ), marketing is a cool thing but in the end it is selling something,
a real good project DOES NOT need that, the project will
speak for itself and
people will see little by little. For the moment seems i was right as we got a DNM, Finex, Kraken and many more things propably to come.... all WITHOUT marketing budget... just the project and its community speaking for itself... demand comes not from sales pitching, but from real need.
@coinling
https://github.com/monero-project/monero... there you can see the Donation Adress

btw shouldnt that change for 2017 or did it already?
I couldn't disagree more on this.
You are saying in indirect manner that everybody who needs Monero will found it.
You are forgetting that the most people are not like you - they are average Joe's watching TV, drinking diet coke and eating processed food and when they go to pick up the daily mail they take a car/rollator to do so. Still, they might have a need for Monero.
Those people are going to find Monero only when they hear it from the sources they are following. Despite the project might speak for itself, the problem is that people who need it
cannot hear the speech.
There are different ways how to get publicity... One way is to pump the price and people start discussing about Monero everywhere and even mainsteam media starts to pay attention to it and the community will grow.
The second approach is the way the Dark coin community does: They have hired "shills" to make sure people speak about it.
Druggies will find it first, then the media will flip out and it'll be Bitcoin 2013 all over again. Dash's advertising seems like corporate LARPing to me, I doubt its very effective or they'd be beating us.