s and effect //

Christmas used to be simple.

The mail from children came flooding in. Santa called to see who was nice or naughty. The toys were made by elves, who loaded the sleigh with reindeer and then hitched up the team of reindeer. Santa made the deliveries on December 24, following midnight westward from Siberia, Alaska.

The whole team was focused on Christmas. It was more than just making toys. You created delight and delivered it. You had a repeat customer if the same child wrote Santa another year later. This worked only if Santa delivered Christmas every year on time.

COVID-19 was a disaster for that business model. Santa has been in hell the last two Christmases.

Santa Claus and his reindeer had to fly masked due to the COVID epidemic of 2020. Rudolph’s red nose was covered up, which robbed Rudolph’s reindeer team its navigational beacon. A few near misses with aircraftliners and a few directional errors followed. Some children were left without gifts on Christmas morning. Santa did still drop off gifts the next day, but it wasn’t the same for either the children or him. The reward was small: warm milk and cold cookies.

In 2021, things did not get better. The supply chain disruptions continued, destroying Santa’s “just-in time” inventory system. Toy parts that are not able to reach the North Pole will be returned to Santa’s workshop. Gifts won’t arrive by the deadline if they don’t. The elf workers went overtime after New Year’s. Overworked and fed-up reindeer refused flight after January 2. Santa had to send deliveries to FedEx or UPS because they were overwhelmed by pre-Christmas online orders.

But 2022 would be different. Christmas must be preserved at all cost. Santa didn’t expect that such a simple goal would prove so difficult to achieve. It was a test of his patience.

Santa vs. Insanity

COVID slowed down demand and lowered supply. After COVID was passed, supply remained stable to a certain extent. Then, demand rose again, exceeding supply. This, in turn, caused chaos. Santa needed to diversify his supply chains in order to manage Christmas 2022. Since Christmas was for everyone, Santa was not picky about where he got his toy parts.

Geopolitics doesn’t believe in Santa Claus. After imposing sanctions against companies doing business with China and then extending those sanctions to Russia following their invasion of Ukraine in February, the U.S. did so. The U.S. State Dept. was the last thing Santa needed. He could be called a sanctions evader. Although he could respond by leaving coal for diplomats, that would not solve the problem.

Some obscure and near-criminal companies specialize in the evasion of sanctions by using front companies located in other countries. Ebenezer Scrooge was aware of a few scammers who could transport goods to Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Santa was not interested. There were deals. Toys would be delivered. The media were kept in the dark.

It was “challenging” to source parts from countries that don’t believe in Christmas. It was too difficult to explain Christmas to suppliers from remote areas of the globe. Santa ordered the parts anyway. It helped to have money.

Santa felt the strain. It was May.

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A union has power

Delivery on-demand was dead. The plan was to maintain inventories and build resilience. The North Pole LLC was established in June 2022. It had branches on all continents, and operated a network warehouses, workshops, and other facilities, some of which were located in areas that didn’t get snow year round.

This was too much for the North Pole Elfs. It was understood that only elves could perform Christmas work. The man who organized the Amazon warehouse workers on Staten Island was seen looking around Santa’s workshop. Yes, they formed a union. (Coincidence?) (Coincidence?)

Talks between the labor unions were intense. However, a deal was reached by September. The North Pole could see the union of reindeer and elves. Humans could be hired by outsourced locations, but they would need to be supervised and managed by unionized Elf. UPS and FedEx would deliver 40% of the deliveries as long as reindeer were handling North Pole traffic. Elves still dealt with e-mail.

So far, so good. However, September brought about a change in the situation. The EU regulations protecting minors’ data privacy were not compatible with North Pole business practices. Santa engaged trade lawyers to travel to Brussels to “work out” the deal. Minors could send Santa toy requests via SMS if their parents had checked the Santa Workshop landing page permission box.

However, the technical knowledge required to manage the IT systems to store, sort, and analyze the gift requests data meant that elves were unable to operate them. The Local Elvish Christmas North Pole Workshop Local 1 union president conceded that outsourced IT could be used by humans to manage the marketing tech stack. AWS was permitted to add more servers to meet any sudden surge in demand.

Santa believed that the reindeer and elves were on his side. He grated his teeth and signed all the necessary papers. Christmas was more important that worrying about problems.

Are we close?

Children who are good would still receive toys for Christmas. Of course, bad kids will still receive coal in their stockings. When the next problem occurred in November, things were still hanging on by a thread in the workshop.

This was when the U.N. hosted its COP 27 Conference, which took place in Egypt. The nations pledged to reduce their carbon emissions by taking concrete steps. This meant getting rid coal. Because burning it released a lot carbon into the atmosphere, which in turn raised global temperatures.

Santa was in a panic. How dare these national leaders ban coal just before Christmas! After being so naughty throughout the year, those kids deserve it! Is COP 27 really about climate?

Santa would not allow these naughty children to get away with it, even though they were grown-ups. If he wants to keep his business afloat, he must switch to greener forms for deadbeat gifts. Santa switched to seaweed from coal. (Where can we get seaweed? Japan obliged. Japan was kind enough to give the elves some Pokemon cards free of charge.

Santa Claus, exasperated, managed to solve the last problem and supervise the loading of the Santa Claus’ sleigh. He double-checked the list of gifts for the nice and the naughty. Rudolph was still blinking as he taxied the sleigh from Runway 27 (West) to Runway 27.

You can just get through it and you will find a cup of rum-spiked hot cocoa waiting for you at the end. Santa thought.

We hope the next Christmas will be even better.

The post Claus was first published on MarTech.