Zig was the first to appear on my radar. I believe I saw Andrew's first (?) talk called the "The road to Zig 1.0" where he communicated his vision very clearly in a way that must have sounded like the promise of the holy land for C programmers who were stuck in C hellscape. Maybe it was even an earlier video where he talked after a rust talk but it was essentially the same message.

Maybe the best marketing is to establish your vision and stick to it over the years ?

In any case c3 didn't exist, I had never stumbled on a talk of Odin's creator and its syntax seemed more foreign (I only knew C back then) so I started rooting for zig. Even though it's not 1.0 yet, zig seems more ambitious (incremental compilation ! comptime ! translate-c ! logical bitcasting !) and committed to the vision of C companion/replacement. That for me is enough to still be hyped ten years after.