“Turkish Brands“ project was initiated by Turkish Advertising Agencies’ Association and Turkish Advertising Foundation in May 2005. The aim of the project was to put together and publish 70 Turkish brands’ success stories, indicating how these brands’ marketing and communication strategies have evolved since their early days and played a crucial role in helping them to attain their current day market successes.

The Series of Turkish Brands – an encyclopedia consisting of 4 volumes has been designed in an understanding emphasizing that “every country is as rich as its brands”. It consists of success stories of effective brand management as well as efficient business partnerships. It aims at the provision of a guiding, educational memory by displaying the development level of Turkish economy and industry.

The first volume of the encyclopedia was a presentation of 13 brands that are born in Turkey and have been progressed with the aid of continous and consistent use of advertising tools of marketing communication. These brands are chosen chronologically out of 70 pioneer brands.

Each published case, comprises of approximately 6.000-6.500 words, 32 pages and minimum 10 different advertising campaigns. The first volume was published in January 2007, covering 13 different brands, born between 1878-1950. For the first volume, 112 face-to-face interviews were conducted with old and new marketing and advertising agency executives and in total 140 hours of recorded time was obtained from these interviews. The cases were compiled with the help of these interviews as well as using all previously published material, brands’ archives and scanning through İstanbul’s seconhand bookshops. The first volume is 85,000 words, 445 pages and contains 150 ad campaigns.

The expected publication date for the second volume is January 2009.

As it would be anticipated, for a project of this size, a large team of people are collaborating. The core team consists of 10 people. Prof. Dr. Nükhet Vardar, through El İzi Communications Consultancy, is responsible from data collection, conducting personal interviews and is the author of the encyclopedia. Furthermore, Aygen Tezcan, Gökhan Doğan (Yaratıcı Stratejiler) and Dilek Doğan (Yaratıcı Stratejiler) have administered the entire creative direction and the page layout of the encyclopedia. Şahin Tekgündüz and Didem Ünal Biçici have done the reduction of the copies. Fisun Bargu Soner and G. Elif Baykal from Advertising Foundation have given total support, coordinating the project at all phases.