Local activities and festivals can play a big part in promoting the particular city or country. Taiwans case is no exception. On todays row gram, we are delighted to have in our studio dr. Yuchien chang, an assistant professor of the graduate institute of technology at innovation management at the National University to discuss the state of the Marketing Strategies that were used to try to raise taiwans international visibility. Welcome to the program. Hello, everyone. Im from the institute of technology and innovation management at the National University. Before i joined the university, i worked at as i worked as a museum person not only in taiwan but in the u. K. The museum i worked for is the victory and museum in london, which is an art museum, and one of the best museums in the world. After 70 years after 17 years in london, i came back to taiwan and joined the university. My experience includes arts marketing, cultural activities, also innovation and cultural institutions. Certainly sounds very impressive area very impressive. Local activities can play a big heart in promoting a particular city. How is that the case. Whats the trend on the global level . What is the trend local festivities can help raise a country or citys International Image . Thats a very good question. In theory, its not only a local phenomenon, i think its a global phenomenon. Other countries in the world hold a lot of festivals every year. For example, in france, courting to a survey, there are more than 800 festivals in france every year. 60 of them began after 1980s from which you can see it is a global phenomenon. In taiwan, there are more than 450 festivals taking place on this small island. We can say every day we have festivals happening around our lives. Festivals in the past is like a time of celebration for religious regions for religious reasons. It becomes like events or sometimes its not just the celebration of religious reasons but the traditional or certain interesting points. We have beef noodle type things and festivals become very popular and it happens around us all the time. In taiwan, i can give you some examples. We have a bell festival and in february, we have Chinese New Year and we have festivals and the most famous one is the lentil festival and it becomes very a mess and popular. Then we have the film festival, rock festival like Music Festivals and a long history of film festivals trade you can see every month we have a big event in this small island. The reason why local government they try to create festivals in taiwan because festivals can bring Economic Impact and also can play a breach tween the lay a bridge between the people nd local industry. En the people i think you can see from experience, they have seasonal festivals in the new year. To boost the local industries. Maybe for the layperson, they were asked a question that cultural activities or local festivals are very much local in nature. How can they if foreign visitors of people outside of taiwan dont know much about your traditions or history, how can they identify what the local activities or festivals simply because its been a big promotional effort behind these festivals . Thats right. Local festival in theory is a local thing. The war the World Economy is shifting from the industry parts we are changing from Technology Industry to a Creative Industry. If you talk about the Creative Industry, local festivals i usually say it is a means to show our local identity. Behind that, the story telling tells a very important issue. How can you package the local history into an interesting story which you can tell not only our friends in taiwan but more Like International friends. From this part, in taiwan, i teach a lot of International Students and they are very impressed. Right now, they are very excited about the festival because theyve heard about the activity we used to do on this festival and they also organized a team to participate in the racing. I think there is storytelling that is a very important part which is also the Creative Industry in taiwan but it is a global phenomenon. If they can tell a good story, they can package it in a very understandable way. From local to national to most of them go through but also outside taiwan. From locals to international, there is a long way to go. There are a lot of things you have to do to prepare before you go to the International Market. Even the fact that this is an ongoing and worldwide phenomenon, how can we plan for local festivals that would distinguish the activities we have in taiwan. In neighboring countries and other parts of the world. Its very difficult. If you talk about needs it festivals, in taiwan you have Music Festivals taking place in different faces in taiwan. In terms of competition, its very difficult. The local value of taiwan, for example, if you want to have a festival, its more difficult than a music festival. We are not very familiar or really good in general, so how can we produce the festivals that would go to the International Market . I think we have to know what is our local value and what is our local uniqueness. That would be a very important part. In terms of competing in the global market, in taiwan, we usually want to attract a lot of International People to attend the cultural festivals. But sometimes, it if we look at the local markets, its small but not like really small. How can we take care of our local people . You can also use these elements to attract International People. My perspective from the local to international, it might be a better way we focus on the International Market you dont have local participation and the local people dont get to participate in the process. We need to take the first break on our program today. We will be back. Welcome back to the second segment of the program. Segmenting our conversation with dr. Yuchien chang, assistant professor of the graduate institution of technology. We will continue our conversation from earlier and talk about some of the festivals that are becoming very popular in taiwan, particularly the so called hot air Balloon Festivals happening in taiwan in places and cities and counties that would follow suit. Talking about hot air Balloon Festivals, the most famous is in bristol, england. The International Balloon fiesta. That is the standard a lot of people try to measure up to. What is your impression and your assessment of this success. What are some of the things we can learn from this success from that particular festival. The bristol balloon fiesta is celebrating its 35 birthday this year. You can see its a very long history of a festival and it becomes one of the most popular outdoor. There are many scholars that try to figure out the successful festivals. They are producing balloons. It is creating creative festivals. In bristol, i think the successful element will be they have worked with a lot of sponsors and partners and they have established longterm relationships with these organizations. Since they have a 35 years history of these festivals, they are very good at event arrangement. They encourage you not to drive a car. They encourage you to take public transportation. Its not a very big city, but it is quite long from the train station so they try to provide frequent transport from the train station to the venue. This festival only holds three to four days per year, so it is not very long. Only three or four days and every year they attract 500,000 people in these really small cities. When you attend the Balloon Festival, you not only see the balloon flying in the sky, but there are Something Like amusement park, Farmers Market that come from the neighbors and also they have some interesting competition. So not only seeing the balloon, you can participate in different activities and it is the local government that invested a lot of money because they are becoming stronger and stronger. The local government dont really invest so much money so the organization or association, they can try to find out their partners or sponsors. Youve got private sector invested in these kind of festival. I think thats kind of interesting. The thing a lot of people are concerned about the hot air Balloon Festivals is we have three to four cities and counties doing it now. Maybe there will be more. We dont want to repeat what has happened in the taiwan market before. When there are so many of them it became just a temporary fact. What would be your suggestions in terms of making this hot air Balloon Festival self sustaining . That is very important. I think the main problem of the Balloon Festival in taiwan is we call it a business model. Its very easy to copy and different places. The first place attract a lot of people in a month. But other counties think its not very hard to have this kind of festival so we can do that. If it is a local government festival, the local government has to think about why this festival can only have them in our county but not in other places. It can only happen here so in this sense, they can think about how to include local partners to the festivals and as i said in the beginning, all of those vessels relied on government budgets. How can we self sustained what will be a big issue . In taiwan, its going to be a big problem if the festival can get copied in different places. So how can we link our local uniqueness with the festivals and how to link them together will be a big challenge area very difficult. Ask what talk about food. Despite the recent scare over Food Security, food has been a huge plus for taiwans or motion of tourism, local festivals and activities. What are the Marketing Strategies in terms of the soft power and trying to attract International Attention . I think that was very famous of food. We have so many Delicious Food and i think its one of the biggest in asia but in the world. Before i came back to taiwan, we had the oyster festival that was taking place in a very small port in canterbury which is not very far from london. I went with my friends because one of my friend is studying food anthropology. We went there together and that was nice because usually we get too big or famous or popular festivals read this testicle is very local. There are a lot of fishermen there and still they catch wasters and every summer, during the summer vacation. They have a celebration of this kind of tradition and they extend their celebration and he come a local festival. In the festivals, they are worried about restaurants and coffee shop. Also the bed and breakfast sectors. People can go there and spend there one day during the festival and make a night there. During the festival, you eat a lot of fresh wasters. But also, they work with a lot of farmers, so there is a section called Farmers Market where you can find organic food. You can find handmade bread in the Farmers Market. Its not a very big festival, but there is a lot of participation. Although its not very big, it is very popular. What are some of the things you would recommend not just for the government for food vendors after this recent scare over Food Security is over, how can we revive taiwans image as the regional capital of Gourmet Foods . That is a very interesting question. For the food vendors in taiwan, we have a lot of creativity on food. It is one of our advantage grade after these events, i think how can we organize different sectors together . For example, im selling the hamburger. Can i use local vegetables or use organic vegetables or can i work with farmers in a very longterm way, not just using a close down strategy. Its also kind of like an opportunity for us to think about the food trend not only how we consume food but we have the opportunities to collect or collaborate with the farmers with the local agricultural sectors. Can we use our local food to produce our traditional cuisines . We need to take another break. We will be right back. Welcome back to todays program. Im your host, wu raykuo. We will continue our conversation with dr. Yuchien chang, the assistant professor of management. We talked a lot about the different strategies we can use to promote a different city or country. How about some other strategies you can recommend . Any interest in trying to promote tourism, having more visitors coming to your city, trying to show the local festivals and trying to get them identified with the local values that are so attractive to some of them very lax in terms of the marketing strategy, in the beginning, i usually like to ask who is your audience, who is your visitor, and this relates to the positioning questions. You position yourself and the local market or International Market. Before we really start, we can think about these kinds of questions. The most important part, not only in cultural estoppels, but commercial activities. We have to think about it its not the only time. If we have the festival happening every year or regularly, how can we attract visitors to come back again . This is another issue we have to think about. Innovation would be very important. Every year, we have the same festivals, but how can we put the innovative elements into the festivals . You can come back to see the different parts and in addition, local participation is very important. For example, usually the festival happens in local communities or local place, and this is very important. We dont look at the local people but a might run a business or maybe they run the food shops. These people kind of engage in these festivals but not directly. How can we link these people together is very important. The last thing i want to raise is if we have the well established infrastructure, for example, public transport. The hotel is, if you have enough hotels in the International Market and do we have the correct english levels not only on the street but in the prince, i think these things come together to think about how to market a festivl. Lets get back to your area of specialty and talk about these ems. You studied in england and worked there at a promising and prominent easy him for seven years. What do you think about the museum functions in taiwan today . People have talked about the National Museum but there are others available. How can we see the museum of taiwan play a bigger role in terms of raising our visibility and attracting more visitors to taiwan . The National Palace museum is a must see for foreigners and tourists. It has the best collection of chinese art, but in taiwan, if i am right, we have around 450 museums nationally, local museums and private museums, so it is quite a lot. Also, the advantage of the museum in taiwan is we have very professional Museum People. Compared to other asian countries, it one of the best museum festivals and asia. Apart from National Palace museum, there are other very good museums, the National Museum of history, the National Museum of science and technology, we have that museum of Natural Sciences etc. These museums are very good and the government spent a lot of money on these museums. But apart from National Museums, we have some private or independent museums. They run very well for us, so for example, there is a museum with only three or four Museum People that they have done a good job with local communities. For these museums, they are really good but kind of lack the marketing strategy. This is one of the many issues for the public museums. You cannot recruit people every famous popula museums, they have marketing people, but in taiwan, it is very hard to have a marketing person because of the museum at. So to compete, if you want to compete in the International Market, it will become a very important. Even the fact we have so many museums both at the national and local levels, how can we try to distinguish among the 450 museums you have identified and make sure they do not compete with each other and you could try to attract more people coming to taiwan . Thats interesting because the museum itself is not only competing with local museums but with interNational Museums. It is very important, and finding your position is very important. We have the National Museum history. These are the oldest museums in taiwan. Many people are very confused. But they are not sure, so finding a position is very important in terms of the National Palace museum, they are good to attract international tourists. But for the museum of natural history, do we focus on the International Market or do we focus on our national or local market . The museum is very good on everyday artifacts. How to combine the museum and educational activities with the school, the National Curriculum activities together. Encouraging teachers to bring the children to the museum and ha