Honestly, GNU might have the world's worst marketing:product quality ratio.

I empathize with their goals, but the jargon limits this to an audience consisting entirely of the choir, and the tone is so preachy that not even the choir will want to listen.

I think it's always been this way. GNU is mostly known for its userspace base system. They have a few higher level applications like MediaGoblin, Health and Octave, but those are outliers. Then GNOME is practically a separate project these days, despite ostensibly being part of GNU.

It's the FSF that reaches the wider audiences through their guerrilla tactics.