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Marketing peak oil

by Paula | 4 May 2009 | permalink | comments
Tags: marketing, peak oil
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TOD has a post up this week titled Peak Oil and Mass Communication, a guest post by blogger Kurt Cobb of Resource Insights. Cobb’s thesis and question: mass media is not especially well suited to deliver the message of peak oil; what can be done to overcome its limitations?

Those of us with business backgrounds recognize his post as the articulation of a classic marketing problem. Unsurprisingly, neither Cobb nor any of his commenters have (as of this writing) brought up the concept of marketing, with the exception of one disparaging remark regarding the marketing that needs to be countered in order to deliver the peak oil message.

The purpose of marketing is to develop and deliver a product message in a memorable way, with the end goal being increased sales. Technology companies, especially, struggle with how to market complex products in such a way as to be apprehensible by the general public. Any mass media campaigning to raise awareness of peak oil is, in fact, a marketing exercise that requires a marketing plan.

A standard small business marketing plan starts with an assessment of the following:

• Company
• Product
• Customers
• Competition
• Goals
• Budget

Since the peak oil issue is not structured like a typical small business, I would suggest the following assessment modifications:

• Who is delivering the message? (ASPO, Transition Towns, a consortium, or… ?)
• What exactly is being promoted? A book, a conference, a website, or… ?
• Who is the target audience for the message?
• Who already has the attention of the target audience, and who will fight to steal back whatever attention you garner?
• What is the goal of the marketing campaign: to increase awareness, to increase website traffic, to effect lifestyle changes, or… ? How will these changes be measured, and how will anyone know if goals have been met?
• Budget — how much money is there to spend on such a campaign? Where will it come from? Will it create a return on investment in dollars, or in some other way? How will alternative returns be measured?

The actual message and the channels used to deliver the message will depend upon the findings of the assessment. Given my experiences with the peak oil scene for the past eight years or so, I would probably suggest the following strategy:

• Who is delivering the message? A consortium of respected organizations and individuals.
• What is being promoted? A website, a DVD, or a motion picture that explains peak oil and its responses in more detail.
• Who is the target audience? Those who are nominally eco-aware and/or nominally conspiracy-minded (think “Da Vinci Code” and “JFK”) — a huge swath of the public.
• Who is the competition? Basically the entire culture. A specific competitors list would be much too long for a single blog post.
• Campaign goal? Primary goal is to drive traffic to the website; to sell the DVD; to drive audiences to motion picture screenings. Secondary goal is to motivate lifestyle changes consistent with the realities of energy decline. (This would actually be the primary goal of the website/DVD/film.)
• Budget? Unknown, but very small for sure.

Fortunately, a recent example of a similar campaign exists — Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. While Gore’s film leaves much room for criticism, it did in fact do more than any previous campaign to raise awareness of global warming and the results are everywhere visible in the explosion of “green” consumer product offerings following the picture’s release. The pattern Gore’s film followed was: promote the film; let the film do the explaining; then drive traffic to the website, or to other websites with which the film producers had established strategic partnerships.

Given budget constraints, the most effective marketing channels for a peak oil campaign would almost certainly be internet-based. But forget pay-per-click search engine ads and banner ads on any but the most tightly targeted websites. These simply will not produce enough results. Email campaigning, podcast sponsorships, do-or-die search engine optimization, and organizing a web-based “street team” to promote the website/DVD/film at relevant blogs, discussion forums and the like, would be a good foundation. Of course, it always helps if your media product wins Academy Awards, but failing that, entrance into various competitions is always a good way to get exposure.

This strategy can also be modified for use at the local level. How about a peak oil film series with guest speakers and a supporting website? Marketing channels locally would be more viral and very low cost. For example, any peak oil aware small business owner would probably be happy to promote a peak oil film series to his or her mailing list, or to put promotional flyers in customers’ shopping bags; a chain email could be used to spread word around town; even a PR stunt to grab the attention of local media would work.

While I have no expectation that anything like this might happen on a national level — peak oil folk are rather quite averse to getting their hands dirty with unclean business — I’d be thrilled to participate in such an effort. Please feel free to contact me if you have such ambitions.

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