Peak Oil’s Impact: Holiday Marketing

Oil plays an essential role in almost everything that touches our everyday lives. From the food we eat to the means by which we transport ourselves, our goods, and our services, to what we grow, build, have, own, need, and do, oil is almost always an important element. But the painful truth now and soon is that the ready supply of oil and gas that we almost always take for granted is on its way to becoming not-so-ready—recent production increases notwithstanding.

What happens when there’s not enough to meet all of our demands, to say nothing of those of every other nation—including the many countries seeking more growth and prosperity? What sacrifices will we be called upon to make? Which products will no longer be as readily available? Which services? Who decides? What will be decided? Who delivers that message to the designers and producers and shippers and end users? What’s their Plan B? And how will we respond when decisions are taken out of our hands? Where exactly will the dominoes tumble?

There is nothing on the horizon that will work as an adequate substitute for the efficiencies and low cost and ease of accessibility that oil has provided us. We simply do not have the means to make that happen—not the technological capabilities, not the personnel, not the industries, not the leadership … yet. Clearly, we do not have enough time to do it all with effortless ease and minimal disruptions.

Piecemeal approaches that address some small aspect of need for some short period of time in some limited geographical area for just a few consumers is in the end a monumental waste of limited resources, time, and effort. We can’t wait until we’re up to our eyeballs in Peak Oil’s impact to start figuring out what to do. We’re too close as it is. We’re going to have to be much better, much wiser, and much more focused. **

Here’s the latest contribution to my Peak Oil’s Impact series—observations and commentary on how Peak Oil’s influence will be felt in little, never-give-it-thought, day-to-day aspects of the conventional crude oil-based Life As We’ve Known It. Changes in all that we do, use, own, make, transport, etc., etc., are inevitable. A little food for thought….

My wife is in sales … the real estate/financial services industry, and she’s quite good. Quite successful, too. Top ten nationally, as a matter of fact, for a company whose name is instantly recognizable to anyone who’s ever done any banking or purchased real estate.

One of her holiday-season rituals, when her daily responsibilities decrease ever so slightly as the holidays near and thus allow her more time outside the office than is usual, is to become Santa’s cookie elf. Dozens upon dozens of favorite treats from a friend’s bakery—unfailingly a hit in every office she visits—are her calling card as she makes the rounds to the real estate and law professionals in the area with whom she does business. The contact with peers she much-too-infrequently meets with in person is a welcome assignment.

Re-establishing the personal friendships is the biggest bonus for professionals like these whose normal working hours afford them almost no time to nurture those important relationships. So too do the relaxed, friendly gatherings afford them all the opportunity to solidify their business relationships. The benefits are reaped every time a referral call is made over the course of the next twelve months.

The cookies my wife purchases are always an important door-opener, and they always work. They are far from her only marketing effort of course, but the personal touch and thoughtfulness go a very long way in having made her one of her company’s leading professionals for more than a decade.

The owner of the bakery likewise appreciates the large sum of money my wife spends out of her own pocket each year. Although the holiday season is the time when my wife makes her largest purchases there, she also makes use of those treats on other occasions during the year.

Customers like my wife are invaluable assets for the owner. The staff she maintains are no less dependent on that business. Her suppliers, the drivers who make deliveries to her store, the various service technicians who keep her kitchen equipment functioning or replaced as need be likewise draw indirect benefits from the bakery store clientele.

The ovens, miscellaneous kitchen supplies, paper goods, wrapping, cookie containers, and all the other items on what is no doubt a long list of supplies do not magically appear inside the bakery. Companies hire suppliers to build/manufacture/maintain/replace the items on that list, and they too depend on transportation up and down their own supply chains. Every employee up and down that line is also a beneficiary of the bakery owner’s success, as are the countless other small and large businesses in that industry who supply us all with treats as well as nutritional necessities.

As evidenced by the good will my wife maintains with her fellow professionals, there are vital intangible benefits to the process as well. Having an SUV makes it much easier for my wife to cart around her deliveries. That isn’t powered or maintained on good will, needless to say.

And so I’ll ask the very same question I’ve asked before: When the supply of depleting conventional crude oil continues to decline, and reliance turns to the inadequate supply of inferior quality, more expensive, harder to come by unconventional sources such as the tight oil formations in the U.S. and the Canadian tar sands cheered on by certain factions of the energy and media industries, what gets prioritized in such a way that every cog of these multiple supply chains are still supplied at current levels and relative costs?

If that does happen, what gets sacrificed as a result?

How much more difficult is it going to be in the years to come to sort all of this out and develop alternative means of providing these goods and services if we’re not having the conversations now with real-life facts to guide us—before we’re having serious problems? Waiting is a strategy, but it’s usually not a very good one.

Peak Oil Matters