THE GZ NEWS.

Twice handed an empty office, twice left a department behind.

Six years across a natural-gas distributor in Athens, a car-rental company in Thessaloniki, a non-profit arts hub in a former brewery, and now a Greek collaboration studio. Two of those roles began with a function that did not exist: the Digital Marketing department at DiRent A Car in 2019, and the PR & Communications department at Fix In Art in 2023. Behind it, a Global MBA in International Business. Filter by department to read what each side of the work involved.

Establish the department first. Then run it.

At Fix In Art the PR & Communications department was established and then managed — messaging, sponsorship approaches, event communications, and a reconnection with the European networks the organisation had drifted from. At EDA Attikis, a natural-gas distributor in Athens, the work was the opposite shape: an existing corporate image to strengthen, with promotional campaigns coordinated across social media, radio, press and print, plus corporate meetings and internal communications. At Cotranspose the brief is collaboration itself — messaging and outreach built to bring partners and communities into shared projects.

Processes, ERP systems and a team of eleven.

At Fix In Art the operations half of the job meant improving legal, financial and administrative processes, developing ERP systems, and training and managing a team of eleven people while major events went out of the door. The habit started earlier: as assistant to the Sales Director at DiRent A Car in 2019, reporting systems were streamlined, a CRM was implemented in Excel, market reports tracked reservations, trends and profitability, and customer complaints were handled against standardised response templates.

Growth arrives as other people’s interest.

Development here has rarely been a sales pipeline. At Fix In Art it was sponsorships secured and European networks reconnected. At EDA Attikis it was partnerships and consultant engagement used to strengthen a utility’s public standing. At DiRent A Car it was influencers and media brought into promotional collaborations. At Cotranspose it is the whole remit: strategic communications built specifically to foster collaborations and partnerships, and to co-develop projects, workshops and exhibitions with them.

A digital marketing department, founded from nothing.

DiRent A Car had no digital marketing function until 2019, when one was founded and led: paid advertising and digital campaigns that lifted sales by roughly twenty per cent, and promotional collaborations with influencers and media. The same job arrived again at Fix In Art in 2023, where a digital marketing strategy was created and executed alongside the communications department. In between, freelance work for Deyanera and HighSociety M.IKE started further back still — a strategic plan and market evaluation first, then social media strategies, with branding aligned against what designers and developers could actually ship.

SITUATED — The Hague, Netherlands.

WRITE — zafeiridis.george@icloud.com

SPOKEN — Greek (native), English (professional working), French (elementary).

CREDENTIALS — Global MBA, International Business, University of Derby (2022–2024). BSc Tourism & Travel Services Management, Higher Institution of Education in Tourism (2014–2018).

SHARED WORK — Several Fix In Art projects were delivered alongside Elli Zafeiridou Georgiadou, whose own record is at portfolio.ellizg.com.