News

EFA Trainee finishes internship - extracts from her final report

25 August 2006

Yi Yu (Molly) Chen, Taiwanese, with five years working experience in public relations, marketing and sales, currently a second year MBA student at Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) at Erasmus University in Netherlands, finished her internship at EFA this week. Her main task was to work on the European Press Database in order to provide a first basis for future activities in this field. Please find here below some of Molly's remarks which are very useful to us: "I have learned a lot from EFA and members. Based on past professions, I would like to express some opinions about the future PR communication activities of EFA. Below are three suggestions from my perspectives: - EFA as Opinion Leader in Various Culture Issues Content of festivals is only one part of the topics EFA presents to an external audience and the media. Positioned as the voice of hundreds of festivals in Europe and beyond, EFA can act as an advanced culture issue presenter that constantly brings up proposals and raises issues to culture policy actors, and at the same time, is a pioneer that keeps pushing forward the development of innovation, knowledge, collaboration, new generation education and audiences developement for festivals. For most of the successful non-profit organization, the key to get media exposure is to become the owner of the issue in their field. On the other hand, EFA members, not only benefit from those fruitful results. Part of the resources also generate and stimulate different innovative styles in art, and therefore EFA and members both bring in an extremely positive exposure of the artists’ work in a tolerant and open society. - EFA Website EFA website is well managed and full of outstanding resources. It is one of the best art website I have ever seen. Minor changes can make it perfect. It is suggested to have a “Press Center” section on the website including recent news release and latest reports which can be downloaded by media. Moreover, a photo/video/music library is very important as well, which can be selected by members to present their festivals best. Visual materials always catch people’s eyes first, and increase the impression and understanding in a short time. - Media tour “Seeing is believing” sums up the importance of amedia tour. From an Asian perspective, China/Taiwan/India/Korea is definitely the next potential market. A yearly media tour with Asian key media can be implemented in the future. EFA can choose to promote the representative European festivals by topics or by category (dance/theatre/music). The coverage with good quality will help members to attract more audiences, artists and tourists from Asia. Time flies. Ten weeks pass. I had a great time this summer and wait for next summer coming. In the end, thanks Mr. Hugo De Greef, Kathrin, and Nathalie for instruction and full support. Thanks to all the EFA members I have talked to, contacted and worked with. Again, thanks for your kindly help. I am honored to join this “Big festival family”, and wish all the best for your coming festivals!"