Here's an idea for a commercial I had:
A 30-40 year old man wearing an army medal looks in the mirror. He sees himself as a child, growing older and older at an accelerated pace, finally morphing into an old man, then a corpse, then finally a skeleton. Then he turns and we see a close up of his face; there is a tear in his eye. Pan out, he is looking at photos of his deceased family members, childhood friends, and army buddies.
He turns to the table where there is a cryonics signup packet. He dramatically reaches out and touches it (it is distant, and he is barely capable of reaching it), at which point there is a lightning flash and a glimpse of a cryonics dewar. Suddenly we see a young boy wearing the same army medal. He salutes, and smiles.
I think this advertisement concept would be more effective if the man became, say, twenty-five instead. In other words, still quite young and full of potential, but not actually losing something, or being rendered helpless by youth. The idea of him being turned into a little soldier by cryonics struck me as creepy.
For a lot of serious charitable causes, people expend tremendous resources on 'raising awareness' which probably, on net, accomplishes little or nothing for the cause it nominally supports. For cryonics, though, the technology already exists, the target audience can pay for it themselves, the main obstacle is genuine ignorance and perverse fear-of-death countermeasures.
The second problem seems intractable, but in the long term we can just let the blind idiot god fix it.
For the first, have any of the organizations involved considered saving up for, say, a superbowl ad? Or even just some youtube videos. I am imagining it set up as a conversation between two people in, say, an office. The skeptic brings up some plausible-sounding objection (sticking to the saner stuff), which is illustrated by cartoons with the continuing conversation as voiceover.
See, I talked to a relative of mine, who I respect very highly, on easter. She's planning to get cremated. Mentioned some technical objections which I know have been resolved, but which I couldn't adequately explain on the spot, and didn't know where to point her for the source.