What's sad is that the marketing department is dead again (at the exception of Max)... we have to find new users
Are you kidding me? Did you even read the last NullStreet update? Did you even see the trifolder handout that was put out just last week?
Probably not kidding. If you want to get new users, you have to do more than a trifold handout! That handout had zero impact on me and I expect most others. Sure it's useful but it's trivial. Sometimes it isn't about working hard but working smart. Go where the money is and make sure they know what is unique about BitShares.
If you want to get new users, you need focus that others can leverage. Let other people do the work for you.. because they want to and because you've made it easy for them to pass the message on. One place that hammers home the *unique* points about BitShares.. plaster that over the top of the forum, so there is no doubt. More of the same detail, people do not need. Keep pushing that single source of information, until it is ubiquitous.. until everyone is bored to death with it. Currently BitShares appears too complex and there are too many directions to push in.
Make buying bitUSD snappy and default in the clients, expecting that people will want that about everything else... or look to leveraging the DEX and make that the single point.. push for people to burn their LTC into BTS instead.
Community matters.. pay attention to reddit/r/bitshares and beyond.
Frankly I think the mistake could be that there's too much focus on the price, at a time when the price should not matter. Get the product working and the client fast and snappy, then sell it hard and wonder about how the price is rising.
Ye olde blitzkrieg tactic works in marketing too.. all push one point hard and the effect is more than otherwise possible. Imagine if we all spent a week in Bitcointalk instead of navel gazing.. I expect there are better ideas than that too.