FedEx Express president and chief executive officer David J. Bronczek told a group of state legislators and elected leaders from 15 states that the U.S. needs an “oil strategy long term.”

David J. Bronczek, president and CEO of FedEx Express, center, speaks to Gov. Bill Haslam, left, and state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris at the closing session of the Southern Legislative Conference.  
(Photo: Lance Murphey)

Bronczek spoke Tuesday, July 19, at the closing session of the Southern Legislative Conference at The Peabody hotel about oil dependence as a national security issue.

“Do you know that crude oil is the only commodity in the world that doesn’t have any transparency?” he asked the group of 200 at the morning session, which included Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, state House speaker Beth Harwell and Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey. “Nobody knows who is buying it or where they are buying it. There’s no possession requirement there. There’s no margin of dollar call on it. … And it’s a big problem.”

Bronczek sounded the themes and points that FedEx Corp. founder, chairman and CEO Fred Smith has been making for at least the last two years about the need for alternative energy resources to lessen dependence on oil.

The Memphis speech was a rare appearance by Bronczek who usually speaks for the Memphis-based company outside the city.

“If the oil issue gets to be $150 a barrel again, it will tip the economy over, I’m convinced,” Bronczek said citing a recent vote by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries not to raise oil production. “Who were the seven who voted not to do it – Venezuela, Iran, Iraq. These are countries that don’t have any interest in helping us.”

The four-day conference has been a mix of discussions about business at the national and international level and government at the state level.

Haslam told the delegates that the debt ceiling standoff in Washington has a simple bottom line for state legislators and elected leaders no matter what the outcome is.

“I don’t know how it’s going to play out in Washington. … But I do know this. One of the effects will be we will be getting less money from the federal government,” he said before addressing how the economic uncertainty makes economic development more difficult.

David J. Bronczek, president and CEO of FedEx Express, speaks to the closing session of the Southern Legislative Conference at The Peabody hotel. 
(Photo: Lance Murphey)

“We’re competing in a world where the impacts of automation and technology are not going to go away. Those jobs that have been lost to automation and technology aren’t coming back and it’s going to make our job all the more difficult,” Haslam said. “Because of that, it’s our responsibility to create an environment where people feel comfortable risking capital. … I think people were burned before and they are not really willing to go out on a limb and take the kind of risk that you need to invest capital to help things go.”

Meanwhile, Bronczek dropped some hints about an upcoming FedEx advertising campaign that will accentuate the arrow hidden in the FedEx logo and take a step away from emphasizing the “absolutely, positively overnight” mantra of past ad campaigns.

“In our minds, FedEx needs to be something more than a great transportation company,” he said. “We’re trying to help people access the rest of the world through themselves.”

The ad campaign will build on something FedEx executives saw when FedEx delivered the first Harry Potter books with Saturday deliveries.

“You know why we did it? Because all those kids that waited for their hero – a FedEx courier – to bring their Harry Potter book to them,” Bronczek said. “They never forgot that we accessed to them Harry Potter. … We’re accessing more than just a business part of the world. We’re accessing their emotional ties to our company.”