The numbers you're citing make my point. While different industries, they're thematically similar. Yet Warcraft as a brand has far surpassed D&D in terms of brand recognition. D&D has fiction lines and video games and formerly a line of toys, a cartoon, and a couple of movies -- so where's the breakout brand awareness?
The cartoon is old and very few of the younger generations will have actually seen it (unless it has seen many more reruns in the US then it has in the EU). And the toys where based on the cartoon (as far as I know). The movies where... Fun for the D&D player (maybe), but were certainly not aimed at the big screen (and if it was it failed miserably). The computer games, the novel lines and even the comic book lines have done far better. Launching D&D among a different hobby crowd. I'm certain that D&D has a deep penetration among the CRPG players, it even has a reasonably big presence among the MMO crowd (DDO is doing better then ever with it's F2P model). Folks that read Fantasy novels will certainly have at least heard of Dragonlance or Drizzt. Same goes for the comic crowd.
Maybe you would want Coca Cola on every tongue in the world, but D&D is not something everyone will enjoy. So why would you want total brand penetration, that 80-90% of the population is aware of the brand is already an enormous bonus. So the folks that are interested in the brand are at least aware of it.
Will Warcraft have staying power? Don't know. Will D&D have staying power? Certainly within the hobby it will. But will the "brand" ever break new ground in the mainstream culture? If the past 32 years are any indication, the gains will be small.
D&D's problem isn't an issue with the brand, but with the implementations to exploit that brand. LotR has had it's own following for years, but only had a real push with the three movies. If D&D had such quality movies, they would be as popular as LotR is now. D&D has epic stories that come close and maybe surpass LotR. So instead of GW making Easterlings, they would be making Bozaks.
The same goes for the DDO MMO, they made a niche MMO game from an obscure D&D setting. Blizzard made a new type of game (for them) from a mediocre setting based on a ten year old IP. They made a great game and a decent setting. The big difference is that most of D&Ds attempts (both by TSR and WotC/Hasbro) has been aimed at getting more players into pnp D&D. That's all fine and good, but there is a limited appeal to pnp RPGing, if they instead aimed at making a good product based on D&D it would have made the brand stronger. WoW wasn't an attempt to sell more Warcraft games, it was an attempt to make a new MMO and they succeeded extremely well. DDO is an attempt to jump on that same bandwagon by effectively doing the same thing only with a different brand, so very few folks had any real reason to change to DDO from WoW. The reason DDO is still alive is becaus it isn't a straight WoW clone but has some unique features and of course the D&D brand (loyalty).
Look at White Wolf's World of Darkness line from several years back. The brand grew rather quickly. It didn't surpass D&D within the RPG industry, but one could argue it had quickly closed the gap on D&D in terms of awareness outside of the industry (novels, TV series, video games, LARP).
Outside of the RPG industry, how many folks remember the Vampire TV series? While the computer games were great, there was no steady stream of support and new games. When CCP releases the WoD MMO that might very well change. The novels never reached the same width of readers as the D&D novels have, only in the LARP communities has reached Vampire an extreme name recognition, that has mutated into a goth/cult like non-LARP thing.
WoD ran for 13 years, getting bigger and bigger, and in one fell swoop alienated most of their customers. The last six years nWoD has pretty much turned the World of Darkness brand into smoke.
Brand obviously matters. However, at this time, the brand disparity is larger within the RPG industry but the gap may be closing, if only a little, based on the ICv2 article. Outside of the industry, the gap is much more narrow & all I'm saying is that if Paizo enjoys continued success, makes the right moves, & has a little luck it's possible that Pathfinder as brand could expand outside the RPG industry. Certainly expanding the brand on par with White Wolf's past endeavors or perhaps even D&D is possible.
Just as it's a better business model for Paizo to control its own destiny by having its own game & setting, it's conceivable that it would also be in Paizo's interests to expand the Pathfinder brand rather than hitching their fortunes to another brand or license (ala Dragon & Dungeon).
Not to be snarky, but why would Paizo loose much sleep about brand recognition outside of the RPG industry? They are still in the growing stages, they just released their very first PF novel. It's going to be a while for Paizo to concern itself with brand recognition outside the RPG industry. D&D is actually shrinking and has learned that fighting within the RPG industry for more market share is a loosing battle, so they have turned to looking for outside profits, they've just done that very badly. Paizo has shown that it can do very good things with the D&D license, but if I was Paizo I don't think I would want the D&D IP, because it's going to be very expensive to buy if available at all. They are still growing with their own IP, so why would they even want to buy a declining rival IP? The only reason I can think of is emotional attachments, and the money that had to exchange hands would be more then emotional attachments are worth (imho). Maybe in a decade if Paizo is really big, and D&D has become really small. They could do interesting things with the D&D IPs (Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Darksun, Planescape, Birthright, Spell Jammer, etc.)...
Since I don't see any possibility that WotC dumps D&D ever, the wisdom or value of tying themselves to the D&D brand again is (in my view) nothing more than an academic exercise anyway.
WotC has shown that it is perfectly capable of dumping IPs, look at Legend of the Five Rings, Hexa-sometghing and Dream-something, and more recent the Star Wars RPG and miniature games. No, the only one that's really attached to IPs is Hasbro (take GI JOE and Transformers as an example). But Hasbro could not see D&D as a valuable enough IP to put it in the freezer, it could easily be picked up by others in the industry (like Mongoose), companies new to the industry, or companies in other industries looking to buy up ready made IPs for 'cheap' (like CCP did with WW).
