Post office Promotional Campaign

Tasdeer: Trade Facilitation and Customs Support

Terms of Reference

Post office Promotional campaign

Implementation Period: Q3Y3 – Q2Y4

FCDO Trade Facilitation and Customs Support (Tasdeer)

The Trade Facilitation and Customs Support programme (Tasdeer) is a three-year programme funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and implemented by Cowater International. 

The objective of the Tasdeer programme is to improve the Palestinian private sector’s competitiveness and the PA’s capacity in the fields of trade, customs and import policy regulation and administration. The Tasdeer programme aims to increase sustainable private sector-led economic growth and job creation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the PA’s fiscal sustainability while ensuring equitable access to increased trade and improved institutional capacity. Gender Equality and Social Inclusion is a main tool and objective for Tasdeer to ensure the benefits of the programme are equally accessed by the diverse groups of men and women in the supply chain.

Tasdeer is designed to be flexible and adaptive and works politically and technically to make progress across four keys interrelated Workstreams:

Workstream 1: Support to expedite the movement of goods and reduce transaction costs. This workstream aims to develop systemic interventions that will seek to expedite the movement of goods and contribute to impactful reductions in transaction costs for Palestinian imports and exports. 

Workstream 2: Support to improve Palestinian trade-related institutions and business enabling environment. This workstream aims to improve Palestinian trade-related institutions and strengthen the trade operating environment. 

Workstream 3: Support to improve the private sector’s skills and innovation to export and create jobs. This workstream aims to support activities that will help Palestinian firms increase their exports through the application of a market-driven approach. This market-driven approach will identify potential buyers/markets while exploring the linkages between the buyer, the firms, and its suppliers. 

Workstream 4: Support to improve PA’s Customs readiness to assume functions from Israel to collect revenues from trade-related taxes. This workstream aims to provide technical assistance to enhance the capacity of the PA Ministry of Finance Customs Department including the possible transfer of additional custom functions from Israel to the PA and to limit fiscal losses from inefficient clearance mechanism of trade-related taxes between the PA. 

The interventions implemented by each workstream are designed to take into consideration the roles and needs of women, youth, and people with disabilities, including those in marginalized areas (i.e., East Jerusalem, seam zone, area C and Gaza), ensuring that all interventions and activities are GESI responsive.

Information on The Postal Office 

The Palestinian authority assumed management of the post office function in 1995. The post office has faced many difficulties resulting from Israeli restrictions on mail and improper handling. Those obstacles have affected the quality of service provided to Palestinian citizens, including the private sector and especially MSMEs. In recent years, things have significantly improved and the postal office management, led and supervised by the ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology, especially after reaching an agreement with the Israeli side in 2019 and joining UPU in 2020.  

The improvement in the postal service have not been noticed as expected by the Palestinian public and especially the business sector due to lack of a concrete and well-articulated marketing strategy. The Post office is in need to develop and implement a marketing and promotional campaign that aims at increasing the awareness of the new and improved services. Moreover, the post office plans to continue the development process through improving the existing services (and customer experience) and introduce new service that further facilitate the trade and e-commerce in Palestine.  

In line with the project goals to support the Post office work, Tasdeer intends to support the Ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology (MoT&IT) in promoting the new services among the Palestinian SMEs, improve the postal office customer experience and assess the current services to design new ones that targets Palestinian startups and MSMEs.    

Objectives of the Assignment

Tasdeer is seeking a company to provide promotional services to the Post Office current services. The Company in expected to Implement a promotional plan that ensures an increase in the awareness of the public to the services provided by the post office with special focus on services targeting SMEs.   

Scope of Work

The hired company’s work should include the following:

Th company should develop a promotional plan (part of the submitted proposal) that clearly identified that targeted audience and the promotional tools/platforms that will be used 

Implement a promotional campaign to increase the exposure of the post office services. The campaign should target both SMEs and individuals. 

The campaign should utilize different marketing tools based on the targeted segments. 

The marketing/promotional messages that should be communicated.

The marketing content that should be used

Future calendar which needs to be followed by the PR/marketing department at the post office.

Capacity building recommendation. Suggestions of staff trainings and infrastructure upgrades are expected to be part of the final deliverable of the assignment. 

Design a monitoring tool for the marketing activities conducted by the post office.

Implementing/supervising the implementation of each activity in the marketing plan 

Create the needed TOR for all the services that will be needed by Third party companies during the implementation period.  

Ensure the involvement of the PR/marketing department in the Post office. 

Create a monthly report during the months of the campaign.

The hired company is expected to be responsible for:

Hold meetings with Post office senior management to better understand the Post office plans and goals.

Ensure that the submitted plan abides with the general policy of the Palestinian government. 

Assess the current marketing capacity at the post office. 

Create the needed content to promote the post office services.

Implement the PR reach out activities to reach the target. 

Promotion campaign implementation: the company will be responsible for implementation through providing all the needed expertise. 

The company should provide a list of potential experts (CVs) for all the expected tasks.

Qualifications:

Proven experience in marketing and promotional activities especially on social media with experience to reach out to international markets. 

Experience in conducting field research and sector assessment. Previous work with governmental organization is a plus.

Capacity of in-house production of materials (printings, videos, website design…etc) is a plus. 

Experience in training and website management

Deliverables:

The deliverables for this assignment are as follows:

Geographic coverage and duty station:

The hired company is expected to be in a close cooperation with The Post office and Tasdeer Workstream lead. All activities of the assignment should consider all cities in West Bank in addition to  gender, small-scale youth, and PWD traders, for the duration of the assignment. 

Submission Guideline 

Interested companies are expected to submit a proposal includes a detailed plan that present:

Identification of the segments that will be targeted.

List the activities that are expected to be implemented with justification for each activity. 

Timeframe for implementation of each activity 

Cost estimation of each activity 

Training schedule 

Tasdeer and Post office will evaluate the proposal based on the quality of submitted plan and budget requested. 

Type of the Contract: 

Short Term Consultancy

Duration of Contract and level of effort: 

The assignment is expected to be accomplished over a period of one year with 240 days Level of Effort (LoE) (planning + implementation).

The expected start date is March 2024 with an end date of December 2024
 

Email to receive the applications: [email protected]