Turkey Home of…

Turkey… The world’s sixth most popular tourist destination… A rising star… A key player in international tourism… In 2014, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism selected I Mean It as its sole official communications agency to develop a holistic and strategic communications approach. The Ministry was looking for a concept that Tourism Turkey could use consistently over the next decade. Our recommendation was “HOME.”

Over the last 12 thousand years, Turkey has been home to dozens of civilizations, a unique quality in the history of mankind. As the agency of record of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, our job was to increase global awareness of that fact.

Therefore, we prepared and implemented a 360-degree campaign in 77 countries, using a mix of print media, outdoors and digital media.

“FEELS LIKE HOME” TV COMMERCIAL

In line with the campaign’s core idea, we created a concept called, “Feels like home.” We travelled all around Turkey, visited its historic sites, shooting awe-inspiring scenes.

The video included moments of hospitality, warmth and openness. And by using a child for voice over, we added an extra layer of friendliness to the video. The result was a down-to-earth commercial, which successfully highlights that in Turkey, guests actually do feel like they are at home.

TURKEY: HOME APP

We had one more task to accomplish: encourage mass participation of locals as well tourists in the campaign.

We answered by creating the TURKEY: HOME app. With this app, tourists could take a photo, add a slogan, which starts with “Turkey, home of”, and finally share their “Turkey, Home” poster with their social circle. Any person, who uses a smartphone that has an iOS or Android operating system could download and use the app with ease.

Within months, tens of thousands of people downloaded the TURKEY: HOME application. As a result, hundreds of thousands of “Turkey, home of” posters were created and shared digitally. Thanks to the app, the masses got involved with the campaign, allowing it to spread around the world organically, and free of charge!

TURKEY: HOME MAGAZINES

TURKEY: HOME OUTDOOR ADS

TURKEY: HOME NEWSPAPER

We had to inform the members of the press about the campaign.

To achieve that we created a branded newspaper for the launch event. The 24-page Gazette covered a broad range of topics. The content of the paper included but not limited to the objective and the story of the campaign, historical statistics, articles written by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, essays on country branding, the full description of the campaign, and future success metrics.

SHORT TV COMMERCIALS

We created a structure in which every commercial opens with a fun fact, followed by stunning scenes of Turkey. All advertisements end with a call to action to visit Turkey. Combined with an authentic yet upbeat tune, the 15-commercials were translated into many different languages.

From popular destinations like Cappadocia and Ephesus to local culinary traditions such as Turkish Coffee and baklava, we portrayed 11 different values Turkey has to offer.

WEB INFOMERCIALS

To support the Home Campaign, we shot a mini-documentary series called, “Journey Through Turkey.” Our host Jeffrey Young introduced 27 tangible as well as intangible values of Turkey in a series of 2-minute upbeat documentaries.

The topics ranged from how to prepare and eat baklava to Cappadocia, to the etiquette of drinking Turkish Coffee, the Centennial of the Gallipoli War, and one of the best windsurfing spots in the world, Alacati!

In less than a year, more than 13 million unique users watched our documentaries on Youtube. Finally, the Journey Through Turkey mini-documentary series became a part Turkish Airlines’ in-flight entertainment system.