I went to bed too early....
Bully, every brand uses marketing, paid or unpaid. I think you are right and wrong, the established companies spend a proportion of their annual budget on marketing where as new company, Mongoose etc will spend far more on marketing as a proportion of income as they have no income to start with. Their aim will be to make the brand as well known as the established names quickly and then build sales on the back of this brand awareness. Of course this is a gamble, they will have poured their own money and a lot of investors money into this, get it right and over many years they will claw it back and eventually make money, get it wrong and they will be looking hard at the benefit reforms.....
Some brands we know on the forum such as H4L and SAF are simply happy to make a quality product and let the word of mouth spread, this is good but the take up rate will be slow. If they are aiming for world domination then this is a bad strategy but if they just want a small solid loyal following then this is a good strategy.