Preface: There’s a flood of greeting gifts. Several units of the Tainan City Government including the bureaus of tourism, agriculture, and cultural affairs have all launched various greeting gifts; farmers’ associations or district offices also selected and promoted their own greeting gifts before. With hundreds of these gifts in total, the consumers are dazzled; the competition is as fierce in local areas as in counties and cities. What to do to market them? Only by establishing the brands and features of Tainan’s products can they stand out in many greeting gift markets.

The bureaus of agriculture, cultural affairs and tourism of the City Government have launched Tainan’s greeting gifts of agricultural products, cultural and creative goods, and gourmet foods respectively. The Bureau of Agriculture sells them at the venues of industrial-cultural events; the Cultural Affairs Bureau promotes them in monthly magazines, exhibition fairs, and feature books; the Tourism Bureau plans to market them by online shopping mall and specialty stores. The only problem is that they all go separate ways and play their own tunes so far. It is necessary to coordinate their actions in order to expect Tainan’s greeting gift products be clearly seen.

Tainan is rich in production, particularly in the diversity of its agricultural gifts, which present wonderful local flavors whether they are fresh or processed commodities. During harvest seasons, the Bureau of Agriculture would always travel to metropolises such as Taipei to promote agricultural gifts, even marketing overseas to pave the way for agricultural products. Nowadays the launching of products is down to farmers’ associations in various districts, providing online services to accept orders.

For cultural and creative goods, the Cultural Affairs Bureau started publishing ‘Made in Tainan’ in 2011, a bimonthly with a print run of 10,000 copies per issue. The magazine mainly covers various aspects of life, interviewing many workers in cultural and creative industries, so that the publication can become a communication medium for the city and promote Tainan’s arts and cultural innovations. In addition, by participating in expositions of the cultural and creative industries, the Bureau invites renowned local entrepreneurs and distinctive businesses in the industries to work together and construct the brand and image of Tainan’s cultural goods. In particular, the launching of cultural and creative works with an orchid theme will be held every year, coordinating with an orchid exhibition to promote the sales of cultural commodities.

This year, the Cultural Affairs Bureau took one step further to plan and publish a feature book on distinctive works in cultural and creative industries. It centers on the products, documenting their design ideas and the authors’ messages. It aims to build a bridge between the designers and the consumers in order to market cultural and creative gifts. Also, the website ‘PLUS creative Tainan’ was launched to build up a database of the cultural and creative industries, where entrepreneurs in the industries can enter their information, and to integrate cultural and creative products with news and events information, to promote the City’s cultural and creative businesses in all directions.

Whether they are agricultural or cultural greeting gifts, they have their own marketing channels; the Tourism Bureau also has its set of marketing strategies to promote gourmet foods and greeting gifts, such as ‘Tainan Gourmet Food and Greeting Gifts Voting’ and ‘Tainan Food Festival’, which have attracted nearly a thousand businesses in food industry to participate. Also, contests like ‘Tainan Food Points Collecting Marathon’ and ‘Tainan Eating and Travelling Master’s Essay Competition’ promote gourmet food and gifts where the public can purchase on the site.
At present, there is no coordinating way among various agents to market their greeting gifts; they mostly resort to events or websites; and visitors to Tainan still do not have a one-stop shop to purchase all the gifts they want, something that needs to be improved in their marketing strategies. Fortunately, the Tourism Bureau is intending to promote the Tainan Specialty Store project, hoping to bring the plentiful gourmet food, greeting gifts, agricultural and fishery specialties, and living, cultural and creative commodities to one place for visitors to purchase, and making the place a base to market products nationally and to export them to foreign countries.

The Tourism Bureau has also negotiated to bring greeting gifts to major sales exhibitions and organize delegations to market them overseas, hoping to introduce Tainan’s gourmet restaurants to the whole country through national culinary events. One the other hand, it joins hands with schools to train and foster new bloods in the catering business to create innovative cuisines with Tainan’s local ingredients. Most importantly, it endeavors to build an online platform to introduce Tainan’s gourmet restaurants, in order to attract more visitors to Tainan and take away greeting gifts.