Planning with the worst case scenario

In Saudi Arabia, door to door post system did not exist. In the traditional system, a PO Box are placed in post offices and the person authorised to collect mails will have to visit the post office to pick up the mails. Most people working in private companies used the PO box of their company, and will get a letter within a month after it has been sent to them, with only few instances of missed mails. Its inconvenience was not only in losing mails, but also in changing the postal address whenever you change your job. I went through a long debate with my bank in India to explain them that the postal address in Saudi Arabia is not the same as residence address. They had to change the rules for updating postal address for Saudi Arabia to make it easy for their customers.

A few years before the postal department in Saudi Arabia came up with an ambitious plan to introduce door-to-door post. It wasn’t exactly door to door, but they placed personalised mail boxes outside all residential buildings for the postman to deliver the posts. The plan went into execution. Post boxes were installed outside buildings. A massive advertising campaign was used to create awareness about the new postal system. The result, you can see in the photo. Kids used these boxes as punching bags and challenged each other as who can break more boxes with a single box. The boxes that survived were the ones which were outside the range of kids. I do not remember seeing a single building where these boxes are intact.

I wonder if they did a market research before launching this plan, and if they did, the market research company certainly did a bad job. The idea was alright. A personalised postal box will mean more privacy and speedier receipt of the posts. It would make the life easy for people who did not work for a company, for example single women, to have a PO Box outside their building. It would also create jobs, and probably revenue in long run, and a stronger infrastructure for the online shopping industry. Where did it go wrong? I believe it is extremely hard to change behaviour of the people, unless there is a strong motivation, coupled with trust that the new approach will work. Most people who used postal address were accustomed to the traditional system. They did not trust that Saudi Postal department, which never had any door to door postal service, will do an efficient job in delivering their mails to them. The postal department would have saved money and face, if they had installed one solid box outside each building which children could not break. I think people would be thanking God that they did not subscribe to PO boxes which any kid could break.

It is good to have ambitious plans, but it also makes sense to do the plan by keeping the worst case scenario in mind. What if everything goes wrong? This is why marketers have the concept of test marketing, so that you can know if the things are not working.