I agree that many gamers are keen for StarCraft II - but I think that the OP was describing StarCraft as a "disaster" in the context of how Activision usually approaches marketing its games. There is a new Call of Duty almost every year - keeping mass interest in the series alive continually. Thus to Activision - for whom the marketing cycle is almost annual and built on continual release so to speak - the original StarCraft could definitely be considered difficult to market in the sense that there haven't been StarCraft releases in the last few years.

Despite this, I agree with both you and the OP - few games have as much "cred" as StarCraft and I think Activision Blizzard have done a poor job marketing it despite huge anticipation. It will probably still succeed though since the game itself is actually quite good.