However, these two key questions were not asked, and the decision about the tools chosen to communicate to the audience was not guided by such information.

Along with a letter of invitation, physician referral was also encouraged. It was recommended in the Standards document that information be sent to health professionals to introduce the program and that they be kept informed through education sessions, brochures and journal articles and newsletters.

Other tools were also set out in the Standards document. These were information and education sessions for women's groups, media notices, educational material at screening sites, posters, and "other local communication channels." Finally, it recommended the development of one standard brochure, for inclusion in the first contact with the letter of invitation and distribution in appropriate locations.

None of the recommendations reflect market research of the target audience or communications theory. Gerald Weseen, the Director of Communications, holds that governments habitually choose brochures as the main vehicle for information dissemination (1995).

It appears that the tools chosen for this communication campaign were standard solutions - particularly two of the main tools, the letter of invitation, adopted from another similar campaign, and the standard brochure. Windahl et al. (1997) state that "rarely is there any excuse for falling back on routine solutions without first considering alternatives." If decisions about which tools to use in this case were guided by information about the group, it follows that the process of deciding which tools to use would begin with all options open, including, as stated earlier, changing the sender.

The role of communications

The point at which communications personnel - the staff tasked with the communications efforts of the DHCS - came in contact with this project is crucial. When the author first came in contact with the project, the first member of the communications personnel to do so, his first response was to do the elementary, that is, find out more about the target audience. Although this led the author to believing that the principal means of communicating, the invitation letter, was inappropriate, it was too late in the process to effectively influence the development of the communications campaign.

The responsibility for understanding an organisation's publics usually resides with communications or public relations staff (apart from those with dedicated research or polling staff), but this is only the first step. As stated in the theory chapter, this two-way communication perspective sees the role of public relations practitioners as boundary-spanners (Grunig and Hunt, 1984). That is, practitioners span the boundaries of the organisation and publics.