MARKA 2008

Everything was highlighted at MARKA 2008.

MARKA 2008 Begins

Former President of the Ratner Group,Creator and owner of Geraldonline

The story of the rise and fall of a brand

One of the most popular columnists of International Herald Tribune, Alice Rawsthorn, is an important opinion leader in the design world. As a commonly quoted, regular columnist of New York Times, Rawsthorn is also an indispensable person in the jury panels of some of the most prestigious design and art awards like Turner Prize and Stirling Prize.

Following the extraordinary speech she gave during the World Economic Forum 2008 in Davos, Alice Rawsthorn was at MARKA 2008 with a speech that pushed the boundaries of traditional thinking. At MARKA 2008, she explored the constantly changing concept of “good design”. Rawsthorn examined also how changes in technology, economics, demographics and behavior, as well as our ethical and environmental awareness, have been redefining our perceptions of what constitutes “good” and “bad” design – and analyzed how brand executives should respond to the challenges and opportunities.

How do you turn a $4 deodorant into a youth icon ? How do you do this when you have to re-recruit your entire user base every five years ? How do you keep a youth brand at the top of its perch for twenty-five years ?

This is a massive challenge since young people can create cult brands overnight, but kill them just as fast. Axe is the world's leading male deodorant and shower brand, despite focusing on a very narrow user group. It continues to grow and put on market share - twenty five years after launch. On this lively session special for MARKA 2008; Russell Taylor, Unilever Axe’s Global Brand Vice-President, and Hugh Baillie BBH Axe’s Global Business Director, showed how the brand had kept in touch with its core target, engaging with its consumers at the right time, in the right places and with the right content.



MERT TÜNAY
Jingle Mingle –Founder, Musician

Can brand teams take advantage of the creativity?

The tense approval stage experienced with the brand management teams of the clients, is the worst nightmare of creative teams that add value and distinction to the brands. While the creative teams doubt whether the client can appreciate a right design, the brand management teams feel the lack of ideas that cannot fight the competitive market conditions and are not easily satisfied. As a result of this love and hate relationship caused by the clash of the left and right lobes of the brain, the creative teams usually end up being the defeated and damaged side.

Can a creative person keep his defense mechanism alive while fighting everyday to keep his ego alive in the face of never-ending criticism? What if after one point, he becomes submissive and obeying? In his speech that he used also the power of music, Mert Tünay sheded some light on the relationship between the brand teams and creative teams, and provoked to think and made laugh the listeners.

JIMMY MAYMANN
Viral Marketing and Social Networks: A new source of power for brands

Viral Marketing and Social Networks: A new source of power for brands

Viral marketing has recently burst onto the marketing scene to pump new life into it with an effective solution to the increasing weakness of conventional methods and outdated techniques.

At MARKA 2008, Jimmy Maymann, president of GoViral, presented sample cases where viral marketing had been very successful and demonstrated how viral tools could make a great impact through usage of social networks.

SARAH McCARTNEY
Brand Strategist, Author, Founder and Manager of Little Max

The brand’s evil twin: The Fake

There is a complicated relationship between brands, counterfeits and their purchasers, which marketing expert Sarah McCartney discusses in her book, The Fake Factor, one which is left unexplored by businesses. By taking a closer look at the reasons why people have been buying fakes by accident and on purpose, McCartney brought a new dimension to MARKA 2008. Why do people knowingly buy a fake when they aspire to owning the brand? When the hunger for branded goods affects a person’s behavior in much the same way as a substance addiction, is it time to reassess how important a logo really is to people’s senses of identity? Has the logo become more important than the quality of the brand?

McCartney questioned the innocence of the purchaser, and addressed the controversy surrounding the trade in fakes, one which deeply concerns Interpol but hasn’t seemed to bother the buyer. There has been more to this than marketing; listeners had the opportunity to look at the psychology, sociology and economics of the fake trade, with Sarah’s characteristic touch of humor.


EREM DEMİRCAN
Türk Telekom – Marketing and Communication Vice President

The Brand: Türk Telekom

In the past three years, Turkey has been witnessing the story of the change of a brand that is penetrating into our lives more and more in every passing day, getting closer to its customers and increasing its popularity very swiftly. The protagonist of this story, Türk Telekom, with much admiration, held on to its tradition and heritage while pioneering the competition in every area through pursuing new technological advancements, adopting customer-oriented services and the use of innovative product ideas.

Committed to being the leader not only for itself, but to make Turkey and the people of Turkey leaders too, Türk Telekom is now leading the way for the industry with the convergence vision. Erem Demircan, Marketing and Communication Vice President of Türk Telekom shared the concept of convergence and its effects on Türk Telekom brand, with MARKA 2008 audience.



ANNE LISE KJAER
CEO of Kjaer Global (UK), Future Narrator & Trend Forecaster

Future Consumer Trends 2015+

His name is already on every lip. Who needs to be reintroduced with the most courteous young designer of the world? Ora-Ïto is the design brand and the Japanese name of the Fench artist, who at the age of 19, has created the very first virtual brand. This self-made iconoclast product-designer made himself known to the entire world with his unauthorized 3D parodies of products designed for international companies such as Louis Vuitton, Apple Computer, Levi Strauss & Co and Swatch. Publishing full page print ads for these virtual prototypes, Ora-Ïto seduced the magazine readers by this act of artistic piracy. At MARKA 2008, listeners had the opportunity of discovering how this young artist had transformed himself from a design pirate to the youngest star designer of history.



PATRICK DIXON
Chairman of Global Change Ltd., Futurist, Strategist, Academic, Author

Happynomics: Get ready to renew your brand for the new consumer age

Patrick Dixon is ranked one of the 20 most effective thinkers in the business world. His consulting services are sought by leading companies for assistance in capturing trends, managing uncertainties, determining risks and developing opportunities.

Dixon discussed the concept of Happynomics and took in hand the idea that the point where economics and psychology have met was the most important determinant in predicting future consumer trends. MARKA 2008 attendees witnessed, how the concept of Happynomics, which have relied on the search for human happiness, have affected their business. How to connect strongly with the passions and hopes of their customers, secret to building stronger brands and ways to increase loyalty as well as team motivation were all in this session.

His discussion on how social, political and brand strategies could be used to build a brand into a culture of happiness, and expanded the horizons of the participants at MARKA 2008.



FATOŞ KARAHASAN
Milliyet Writer

Creative Advertising’s Temple: Cannes Lions

During seven days in June, over 10 thousand delegates from more than 80 countries gather in Cannes to celebrate the best in advertising industry has to offer the world, to review the year just gone, and to draw a roadmap for the future. Cannes Lions not only celebrates the best in creative advertising for 56 years but also the top advertisers with the “The Advertiser of the Year” award since 1998. A common characteristic of all “the advertiser of the year” companies and their top level brand managers is the inspiration they give to their advertising agencies. They can be summarized as professionals who pave the way to differentiate themselves in what they do, break existing patterns and develop a unique language to facilitate creative brand communication solutions. Milliyet Newspaper has been the Turkish representative of this important festival since 2002 and Milliyet’s expert writer on advertising and brand management, Fatos Karahasan is one of the closest followers of Cannes Lions. At MARKA 2008 Karahasan presented why the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival has been a must-see place for all those involved in advertising and communications.



SHIN’ICHI TAKEMURA
Media Producer, Anthropologist, Professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design

Daha İyi Bir Dünya için Teknoloji

The Japanese media producer Shin’ichi Takemura, is one of the leading opinion leaders of the Far East and has pioneered countless IT-oriented social activities so far. Known with his extraordinary views on matters like global warming and Kyoto Protocol, Takemura is also an anthropologist with unusual ideas. He believes that the spreading technology will lead to important changes in the social interaction structure of the societies and sensitive technological solutions will help improve the world and the humanity.

His presentation, which questioned the leader technology brands, did not aim to provide facilities that have been making people think less, but on the contrary, it aimed to increase the sensitivity. This session provided a brand new outlook on the perspective of the brands regarding the technology and its purposes, and Takemura made the audience listen to the sound of flowing water in the Buddhist in Kyoto through Global Stethoscope Project, in real time. This extraordinary MARKA 2008 presentation pushed the boundaries of traditional thinking and made a huge impact on the minds.

In the beginning, love was an emotion that affected only the artists, philosophers and lovers but now with the birth of the ‘love brand’, it has turned into a marketing concept highly in demand. All the brand executives sought to produce brands that will remain mysterious so that the brand and the consumer can have a love affair. This mysterious and multi-dimensional concept has become a topic that now puzzles the brand executives too.

Yalın describes love with his songs, lives a love affair with his fan base and leads the other singers with his best-selling albums. He had the closing session of MARKA 2008 and inspired the brand teams about the love-brand relationship. More over to that he left a mark on the closing session by his surprise song special to MARKA 2008, called “Bir Tek Sen Lazımsın” that he wrote in one night, before the conference inspiring from the research that he made among the MARKA 2008 attendees.

MARKA 2008 platform witnessed a critical debate where the ‘brand’ Turkey was probed with a completely different approach.

MARKA 2008 put the spotlight on the successful brands of the business world, in the subject of Turkey brand, where so far only the governments and public authorities were blamed. By the moderation of the veteran journalist Güneri Civaoğlu, with its guests, The President of the Investment Support and Promotion Agency of Turkey (ISPAT) Alpaslan Korkmaz, Member of the Board and Global Brand Director of Mavi Jeans Elif Akarlılar, Chairman of Turkish Association of Advertising Agencies, President and CEO of TBWA\ISTANBUL Cem Topçuoğlu, an extraordinary debate set the agenda.

MARKA 2008 AWARD CEREMONY

MARKA platform believes that brand building is critical in every area of life and therefore this year the award went to a personal brand that was born in Turkey and made great international achievements.

Every year, MARKA award has been given to only one brand for a specific theme of the year and this year the award went to the Most Successful International Brand Emerged from Turkey, the successful film director Ferzan Özpetek.

Embracing his award by the accompaniment of his movie “Saturno Contro” Ferzan Özpetek made the audience live an unforgettable session by his sincere speech with full of sentiment.