So, how to advertise the new postcode system?

How to persuade those D-4s that it's not so bad having a random-looking seven-digit postcode when their old one signified so much?

Trivialise the task of remembering all those numbers and letters when a name, a townland and a county used to work perfectly well?

Or communicate the message by taking the no-nonsense, slightly terrifying approach beloved by the Revenue Commissioners?

It is a task that will be exercising the minds of advertising agencies in the coming months now that the contract with postcode developer Capita has been signed and the tender calling for expressions of interesting in the advertising and marketing contract been posted.

Communications campaigns
The Department of Communications has form when it comes to these blanket communications campaigns – it was over the launch of Saorview and the analogue television switch-off which was a more difficult concept to communicate than the relatively straightforward postcode one.

At the launch on Monday, Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte said the roll-out would begin in the first quarter of 2015.