On creativity, advertising, and a little inherited nerve…
Things have been pretty lively lately. The projects I’ve put so much work into are finding their audiences and getting noticed.
Serbülent Apartmanı, a film I produced, screened at the Miami Turkish Film Festival, won an award, and received some wonderfully warm feedback from audiences.
It went on to become an official selection at the New York International Film Awards (NYIFA).
Why did audiences love Serbülent Apartmanı?
The film takes us back to the ’90s and to the warmth of the relationships in an apartment building where neighbors sometimes clash and squabble, but pull together when times are hard. Maybe that’s one of the things we miss most today: having someone whose door we can knock on. I’m sure the journey of Serbülent Apartmanı will continue, and I hope to share more good news in the days ahead.
I talked with a lot of people at the festival and afterward. Along with my creativity, they had some lovely and interesting things to say about how I talk about my work, promote it, and get it in front of people. I heard it often enough that I finally asked myself: Does some of this knack run in the family?
Our elders used to say, “Even what happened seven generations ago can affect you.” Science aside, there’s no doubt that certain family stories leave their mark on us. I tend to look on the bright side, so let me tell you about the good genes that may have come my way…
One of the most colorful examples of my family’s flair for advertising was my father’s uncle.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Abdi Kaptan Advertising Agency!
The agency’s founder, president, creative director, sales manager, PR officer, and probably its accountant were all the same person: Uncle Abdi.
To my mind, Abdi Kaptan was one of Türkiye’s most natural ad men. One of its earliest, too, if you ask me. �� He loved the job so much that whenever he got his hands on a new product, everyone heard about it. He’d tell you about it with such enthusiasm and charm that first you’d learn something, then you’d smile. If the product held no interest for you, you might start to feel a little trapped as the pitch went on.
To Uncle Abdi, that just meant you weren’t quite convinced yet. He never gave up. I can still hear him calling me “TÜBA.”
He came up with his own method without reading marketing books, commissioning customer research, or asking for a report on his target audience. His target audience was everyone. And they didn’t even know it.
He was one of the most colorful and entertaining characters of my childhood.
Uncle Abdi had traveled the world. There seemed to be almost nothing he hadn’t seen or heard of. And whatever he saw, he wanted other people to see, too. Some people come home from a trip with souvenirs. Uncle Abdi came home with a whole new way of life.
In the mid-1980s, he built a house in his seaside town that looked like a second White House. Marble everywhere, white colonial columns as far as the eye could see… The garden and grounds were lit with round globe lights we called “watermelon lamps.” For its day, the place was a whole production. People would come just to see the house and talk about it for days afterward. My aunt was wonderfully hospitable, too, may she rest in peace. Those big dining tables and carefully laid spreads were part of our family tradition. Anyway, back to Uncle Abdi.
In today’s terms, Uncle Abdi went viral long before social media existed. In those days, he was behind nearly every new product that made its way to us. Whenever people saw something unfamiliar, they probably asked, “What is it?” and then, almost in the same breath:
“Did Abdi Kaptan bring this one, too?”
One year he brought fireworks. It must have been the early ’90s! They might seem ordinary now, but back then hardly anyone around us had ever seen them. When he started trying them out, everyone was astonished. Bursts of light filled the sky, and people watched in awe.
Uncle Abdi, as usual, had gotten a little carried away with the promotion. He was putting on fireworks shows all the time.
Unfortunately, one of those shows ended in a serious accident. Uncle Abdi lost his entire little finger.
The lights, the explosions, and then the cries… In my childhood memory, the wonder and the terror of that night sit side by side. I can smile now at the thought of how excited he was to put on a show, though there was nothing funny about the accident. Of all Abdi Kaptan’s unforgettable shows, that’s the one I wish we remembered differently.
Years later, I learned another detail. Some people in town saw the flashes in the sky and thought aliens had invaded!
Before you say, “No way!”
I swear, these things happened.
When I was a child, we believed almost anything. I’ll never forget a newspaper story I remember reading in the summer of 1987. Supposedly, a baby had been born with a beard and announced that the world would end in forty days. We actually sat down and counted the days.
Come to think of it, even as we waited for the world to end, our faith in the newspaper never wavered.
Today we’re amazed that people believe everything they see on social media, but I guess we haven’t changed all that much. Back then there was no algorithm. We had the neighborhood, the neighbors, and newspaper stories read aloud. The news traveled from one person to the next, getting a little more colorful with every telling.
Abdi Kaptan is gone now, but sometimes I catch myself talking about something with that same excitement of his. I love bringing an idea to people’s attention, making them curious about a story, and sharing the work I’ve put my heart into.
How much of that is in my genes and how much comes from watching a man who entertained me so much as a child, I couldn’t say. I do know I wasn’t the first in the family to take to this work so eagerly.
The tools have changed, of course. He had his watermelon lamps, and we have social media. He told people about the new things he brought back from around the world. I tell stories about art, film, and culture. I recognize that same excitement in myself:
Making what you believe in visible.
So I remember the late Abdi Kaptan with love and a smile, and I do my best to keep the invisible flag of the Abdi Kaptan Advertising Agency flying high.
After all, when it comes to self-confidence, I’m a global brand in my own right.
Tuğba Yazıcı as Marie Antoinette
Is it genetic? Who knows? The family tradition lives on. Full speed ahead!Tuğba Yazıcı
Modern Guliver
ARTTMODERNMIAMI Gazette
