Turkey Revisited

A very positive outcome from my speech in Istanbul last december was that I was made chairman of The Marketing Summit conference for the coming year. A part of this honorary title is to help formulate a theme for the coming year; a theme that can, hopefully, pinpoint the marketing zeitgeist in Turkey and elsewhere. The ideation process is driven by the summit's advisory board consisting of 30 markteting and advertising professionals from Turkey's blue chip companies. The session, hosted last Friday morning, was energetic and genereated some really interesting ideas. The challenge will be to find truly great speakers that can carry the message and, more importantly, find some ways to create interaction between the participants and expertise in order to avoid the usual one-way communication that is usually the case at conferences. If you have any tips of speakers or other advice that we can use, please let me know.

Another great aspect of last week's trip was hanging out with Peter Fisk. No tonly does he have a new book, Business Genius, coming up. He's also a  true marketing celebrity in Turkey, hanging out with the head of Sony Turkey amongst others. In May, he'll be interviewing Richard Branson at the London Business Forum. (If you're going to that, please come to my session the night before). We had a great talk by the bar about life, family and title ideas for my forthcoming book.
Travelling when having a young family at home has many downsides but one of the few advantages is that you appreciate every second so much more. I remember sipping a drink by the bar with Peter and cherishing every single moment. A rarity indeed.

I confornted a slightly unnerving aspect of Turkey too. Speaking to trendspotter Özgur

Alaz, I was given his blogaddress for Marketallica. Trying it out, however, put me face to face with Turkey's censorship. Wordpress is blocked in Turkey. You can read why here.