I don't think that it will experience the same fate either, just that it will be harder to convince people to trust this enough to put their money in - not wanting that to be true, and thinking that those people would be wrong to ignore Wings because of what happened to The DAO doesn't change that fact. Recognizing it and talking about what can be done may change that fact.
Also I disagree that 'DAO' is just a marketing gimmick: its an actual thing not just a word.
Sensible points. Like it or not perception is a huge part of crypto valuation right now (just like the stock markets) so just ignoring these kind of issues would be foolish.
Right now in addition to the DAO/ETH crisis there is also the BTC block halving issue/price instability and there is also a lot of ICO fatigue from the large amount of recent ICOs.
All of this should be considered before making a hasty launch.
Yes, its difficult timing for a few reasons as you say. But at the same time they've already started things like the signature bounty so they can only leave it so long before people will start to get unhappy and/or remove the signatures. Hopefully The DAO will refund everyone's ethers before too long and BTC will find a range to settle in and they can start the ICO after that.
If not then perhaps they could start the ICO and just have it run for quite a long time?