X-Message-Number: 28463
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:54:14 -0400
From: Keith Henson <>
Subject: Re: Selling cryonics?

At 09:00 AM 9/18/2006 +0000, Francois wrote:

>One of the most vexing problems in cryonics is the difficulties 
>encountered when trying to sell the concept to ordinary citizens. Has 
>anyone ever thought of enlisting the services of a marketing firm to solve 
>that problem?

Yes.  Several times.

>These guys are extraordinarely good at what they do, they could almost 
>sell an anvil to a drowning man. Surely, selling cryonics would be an 
>interesting yet not overwhelming challenge to them.

It was.

>Perhaps this has been suggested in the past and rejected for some reason. 
>I can think of at least one reason myself, namely the cost of hiring such 
>a firm. Yet, it would probably be useful to look into this. Perhaps hiring 
>a firm directly would not be needed. It could be a project for a group of 
>college students, or be handled by enlightened amateurs in the field, or 
>the services of retired marketers could be sought. I'm no expert but I 
>sense untapped potential for expending the ranks of cryonics subscribers 
>in that direction.

In some ways we all engage in marketing cryonics.  Some are more successful 
than others.  Many years ago when Alcor was much smaller something like a 
quarter or a third of Alcor members traced their membership back through 
me.  But I think that was far more due to the class of bleeding edge people 
I associated with rather than some special influence I had.

People who are ready to hear about cryonics (and do something about it) are 
rare.  There are perhaps 1.5 billion potential cryonicists in the 
world.  Among all the cryonics organization they have about 1.5 
thousand.  Which puts being signed up in the 1 in a million class or 6 
standard deviations.  That's out of the class marketing can deal with, or 
so I have been told.

Keith Henson

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