I like that reply ! 😄
There is one thing which is highly relevant un what you wrote: "work with brands". True! No matter whether for advertising or for having buyers of hive, "work with brands/companies" is central. But who could do that, in practice?

Who could contact a company / a brand on behalf of Hive and say "Look, I represent this distributed text platform, we generate traffic and views, come work with us - either by placing ads or by buying our token to use it as loyalty points or whatever"

The answer is ... NO ONE ! This is a major drawback of "decentralization " - there is no leader, no one feels empowered to make decisions on behalf of the others, on behalf of the platform. No one is in charge. No one is responsible of drawing up a plan and then following through.

Failing that, then what?

I see no silver bullet. It will be a grind

It can be "grassroots" - starting small like Bitcoin did, having regular dolphins and orcas use the platform as their backend and investing small amounts.

Or it could be a bigger brand who by chance discovers the power of this platform and decides to try ot out and ends up making it work for them.

None of us are expected to come, all by ourselves, with a solution on behalf of the community. It's "decentralized ". None of us can, all by ourselves. We can be a part of a solution, but the solution, if it ever materialises, will involve a lot of luck and "aligned stars"