They ought to consult with with the HabitableZone--we've discussed this and come up with a number of concepts.

For my part, a while back I argued that materialistic arguments don't cut it because there are almost always going to be better ways to get rich or to deliver some technological innovation to people. The essay addresses that:

“By and large, the public is disconnected from everything in their lives that is brought to them by space,” said Brett Alexander, vice president of government affairs for Transformational Space Corporation (t/Space). “Their use of ATMs, the credit card at the gas station, the weather service, GPS, all of those things, don’t say ‘space’ to them, nor do I think they should say ‘space’.” He noted that the value provided by space is like the value provided by the Internet: people don’t care how they get Internet access so long as it works and allows them to do what they want online.

I argued that a powerful message would involve tapping into basic human drives and relating space to primal human motives and as well as human history: Exploration leading to settlement. It wasn't until the very end of the essay that there was a hint of this idea:

What is it about space that makes it unique, worthwhile, and valuable? One suspects that, at the end of the day, it’s more than just communications and navigation. There is something innate about space that captures the imaginations of so many people: figuring out what that is and how to capitalize on it—be it the exploration of new worlds or enabling more people to go into space themselves, to offer two examples—seems a higher priority in the near term than crafting advertising campaigns.

Close. I'd recast the message slightly: More people will get into space when there's somewhere for them to go; finding those places requires exploration; exploration requires development of a technological infrastructure. In proper chronological order, there's a plan that can be expressed in terms comprehensible to anyone who remembers elementary school history: Figure out how to build the ships; send them out to explore; people will follow.

(Stipulated that I'm describing a simplistic message suitable for public consumption. I know I'm overlooking space habitats as well as glossing over robotic exploration to sort of imply human exploration...so sue me, that's how you get the public motivated.)

Instead of harping on the novelty of space flight, how about we do the opposite and cast it in familiar terms? Doing so might, I think, remove the conceptual stumbling block of thinking of space flight as so difficult and expensive that it's barely worth the effort. That way of thinking keeps space always just beyond reach, and that's the gap in which apathy grows. We need to eliminate the defeatist question "Why go to all that trouble?".

I don't have much hope that panels like the AIAA group described in the article will be able to come up with a strong message. The composition seems to be the usual suspects: Big government contractors and space entrepreneurs. They're among the few people who actually find the materialistic argument personally compelling simply because they're in the tiny minority with a material stake in space, and that inevitably forms a blind spot. In fact, I hate to say it, but their quotes make them sound like a bunch of men sitting around wondering "what do women want?". They find the public's attitude mysterious, and need to hire professional pollsters to explain it to them. Professionals have their uses, but if the people in charge don't understand the issue at a gut level, all the professional studies in the world can't make up the deficit.

Yep, they should hire the HabitableZone to craft the message.