I always thought being involved in higher profile events would be good.
Perth no longer holds the RedBull Air race but it would have been good to see some freestyle demos done down in front of the South Perth foreshore.
Dumb suggestion
Pictures of attractive people windsurfing in the footstraps and smiling, not wearing wetsuits in the sun with their friends in moderate winds in sheltered waters..... and people with normal vehicles rigging up effortlessly beforehand and having barbecues on the beach afterwards...
Great thread. This how were doing it locally inverlochwindsurf.org.au/ .
Lots of fun stuff without getting too serious with a good social network to help people out. Currently 80+paid up members and it doesn't take a huge effort to make it happen but you do have to get involved and put back into the sport. And its a HUGE amount of fun.
We windsurf cos its fun.....nothing else needed 
As Kato said great thread and windsurf cos its FUN and this is who we are doing it locally too! www.windwanderers.org.au/ Also lots of fun stuff happening and a great social group of members. Currently 60+ paid up members in our club and we have only been around for 12 months!
Just this afternoon I have done a telephone interview for our local new paper promoting a handful of our members who are heading up to Green Island to compete in the Nationals. Next month our club will also have a mention in a local fitness magazine. Last year we had a really good response from local radio and some newspaper articles promoting our open come and try days which were a huge success.
I hear you Dylan and Kato, FUN is the key word for me.
Here is a few screen shots of the big french fella showing us how to have FUN... formidable!
I am in awe of the skill shown in the Gran Canaria video and I envy them and I really want to do it but ... it is sooooo booooring.
You see the first doubles and go wow. Then you see it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and a backroll and .... All these videos have a shelf life of about an hour. Once you've seen them you never really need to see them again. I should know, I've got cupboards full of the ****ing things.
The antics and exploits of the best in the world are usually completely irrelevant to the rest of us. No matter how much I do a sport I am never going to be a Kelly Slater or Cadel Evans or Robbie Naish. I guess in real terms the only thing that is relevant is Kelly's getting old, so is Cadel. Robbie's already old but he seems to be having fun.
The problem with this thread is everyone is posting stuff to try and impress people, or posting stuff that impresses them. Very little of it addresses the fundamental issue of how to market windsurfing.
All I can really think of is a two prong approach. Identify the main target market (ie. cash cow - fit middle aged men with disposable income), and produce stuff for them. Identify an input stream of new adopters (presumably the kids of the middle aged men) and put stuff in place to snare them.
The marketing that Robbie Naish produces seems to strike a good balance. It focuses on the "who cares, have fun" message. I could never do the things he does (or has done) at the level he has, but I feel I could spend a day riding and surfing and paddling and stuff and not embarrass myself.
The Defi Wind video shows men and a woman (OK they need to have more women in the advertising) having fun and going fast - nothing too complicated and 1000 windsurfers.
The trade wind video was the best marketing I saw when I was getting into windsurfing although it wasn't how I started, at the time it was the video I would show anyone who was interested in windsurfing. Back in those days there wasn't such a big gap between the top guys and the ordinary sailor and people watched Hawaii as that was where are lot of the new developments came from.
Its got great yet unfamiliar music, has a storyline, and they are having fun Again they should have featured the women more. The bit where Mike Waltze and (I think?) Joyce D'Ottavio ride out together and do matching table top jumps - they should have had more of that.
A few good video's aimed at getting men, women and children into the sport are needed. We already have many brilliant videos of the cutting edge performance side of things.
But videos are probably not the key to getting people into the sport.
Cost is one major factor and although there is a lot of good second hand gear out there that people want to sell, anyone new to the sport would be put off by the initial cost and by the minefield of identifying the right gear to get, so putting together a quiver for a beginner of second-hand gear would be one improvement that could be made.
Selling beginner packages of new gear is well covered by manufacturers but the cost may stop quite a few people taking up windsurfing who would do it if they could get a cheaper quiver and trust that it would do the job.
Select to expand quotejoe windsurf said..
Windsurfing = The Sky has NO LimitsBut gravity makes us fall out of the sky as graceful as a base jumping elephant.
