If that were the case, they’d be neck and neck with Anthropic and Claude. But ChatGPT has far more market share and name recognition, especially among normies. Branding clearly plays a huge role.
Over time, competitors catch up and first mover advantage melts away.
I wouldn’t attribute OpenAI’s success to any extremely smart marketing moves. I think a big part of their market share grab was simply going (and staying) viral for a long time. Manufacturing virality is notoriously difficult (and based on the usability and poor UI of ChatGPT early versions, it feels like they got lucky in a lot of ways)