I don’t know about marketing. I can’t recall ever seeing a Moog ad. But given their history as a company that bundles and unbundles modular gear, it’s hard for me to think of something “more Moog” than their current lineup.
Starting all the way back with the Wendy Carlos-era Moog modular, the essential experience got bundled into instruments like the Minimoog and Taurus. Eventually Moogerfoogers unbundle everything into into CV and modules again (this time shaped like pedals). The Subs bring everything together again. Then the Mother-32 unbundles, this time in the shape of euro-flavored semi-modular. Then the Grand/Matriarchs bundle it again. It’s a nice cycle.
Even the Moog One fits this pattern. The Voyager was trying to answer the question of “what shape will the next unbundle have?” And Bob seemed to think it would be modularizing the Minimoog without going modular again. He wanted to expose a lot more routings, but wanted to patch them with software instead of cables. The Moog One is the ultimate expression of this idea. An unbundling of the Minimoog into the original Moog Synthesizer with firmware instead of jacks.
This highlights the problem at Moog. It wasn’t a lack of creativity or repackaged IP. They were creating a ton, and repackaghing is what Moog does best! Rather, it was a failure of leadership; a failure to pick a single road to travel. It seems like half the company thought the next unbundling was destined to be semi-modular while the other half thought it would be software-controlled. And rather than pick one, they “Why not both?”-ed it.
Now, given what I would say was the “cool” reception to the Voyager (don’t @ me, it’s my favorite Moog), I think the semi-modular folks had it right, and the Moog One was an expensive mistake that Moog couldn’t afford to have flop. If they had let it go, maybe we’d have a Sub Harmonitaur and a Moog+Linn DPAD by now?
But whatever the reason, it wasn’t a lack of creativity, and I don’t see how marketing was a factor at all.