One of these "how to revive general aviation" threads pops up every few months. The most recent one is here:
http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=72549
I know there are a lot of pilots who think it is a marketing problem. My opinion is that most people can't afford it, and of those who can, most of them aren't interested.
Which re-creates the 2 essential questions of this thread: How do we get people interested in GA? And, how can we reduce the costs so that more people will participate?
The answer, in part, is marketing. Which is very powerful.
What is interesting is that people who work for other companies fail to see that
successful sole proprietors (as well as the company they work for) are ALWAYS marketing themselves. NEVER EVER pass up an opportunity to market your business.
Further, don't confuse marketing with a sales pitch. Sales is part of marketing but marketing is much much larger in scope and depth. Marketing includes brand creation and recognition as well as other things. Sometimes those things are bit untruthful.
For instance, Budget created the slogan that they are #2 in car rental business. When they did this Budget KNEW that actually they were #3 so they fudged their campaign a bit. It worked, they are #2 behind car rental giant Hertz. What's interesting is whether anyone can remember, when it comes to car rentals, who will pick you up? Hint; it ain't Hertz or Budget.
This means that name recognition and branding also include slogans and other phrases that people remember because they're catchy and in their face all the time. Ask yourself, who is the Marlboro man? That is an icon that was created in the 60's and is still valid and memorable today.
That's how powerful marketing is.
So, GA needs to create a marketing plan, an icon/slogan, and get that in front of the people they are trying to attract. From there, if no one can afford to play, no one will stick around and your marketing will be wasted. that leads us directly to step #2 which is get the excess bureaucracy out of the way. Fewer training hours is less cost. No PPL medical means that more people will want to play. Even the plane mfg's need to get involved withe cheaper aircraft designed to appeal to the gen masses rather than a specific pilot segment. (Which is why the RV's are so popular - they appeal across the board by being fast, economical, and fun.)
Now if AOPA and the major plane mfg's could do a study and present that data to the FAA which would show that reducing costs and eliminating the medical will improve aviation with no risk of reduction in safety, that could possibly help in a significant fashion.