Comparing the Brawn GP situation and strategy to that of HRT is pretty ill informed. Whilst both teams find/found themselfs in a position of little sponsorship the avenues for success will be completely different paths.
Brawn found themselfs with a car that was massivley developed by a huge multi national, Brawn would have been very confident in the cars performance and not taken the project on if he had not seen such positive figures.
They could afford to do it the way they did, they had a gaurenteed budgte for the year and basically only had to focus on maximising the performance that they knew was there.
HRT are infantile, a very young team that is coming form a terrible chassis made by Dalara, this is their first real go at it as a team and they are approching it differently. I think the livery is brilliant, it gives the opportunity for fans to feel an affinity to the team and garner some support that they would not otherwise have.
Sure winning races will do that too, but you have to pick your battles.