INTRODUCTION

AME’s award-winning Grand Jury members have a world-wide reputation for innovation, creative excellence, strategic prowess, and the ability to deliver distinctive and effective results for global brands.

The AME Awards honors not just campaigns that are creative, but campaigns that hit the bullseye for brands, triumphing in both creativity and effectiveness and AME’s Grand Jury are the genius minds behind many of AME’s award-winning entries.

2019 Grand Jury member, Canan Pehlivanoğlu Öke is Senior Brand Communication Manager for Eczacıbaşı Building Products Division responsible of the brand VitrA Bathrooms, Artema, Villeroy & Boch Tiles. This Canan’s second year serving on the AME Grand Jury, and she brings over 13 years in strategic planning to the  judges panel having served as former Head of Strategy for DDB Istanbul and in other key strategic positions at agencies such as Medin Turgul DDB, Rafineri Istanbul, and McCann Istanbul.

Canan is passionate about brand effectiveness and would like to discover new boundaries and new challenges at the core. To understand brand management with depth, she prefers to replace her perspective: from creative agencies to the brand side. As senior brand manager, she has worked on brand strategies while managing daily business with a team of 10 people from 3 different units: Brand Communication, Digital Marketing and Marketing Analytics.

INTERVIEW

AME Awards: AME’s winners and entrants are behind some of the most innovative leading-edge creative work on the planet that delivers the most impactful result. Tell us about your process of creating and delivering creative and effective results. Are your ideas inspired or do they come together as the result of a collective brainstorming session with your team?

Canan Pehlivanoğlu Öke: While working for creative agencies, I had believed that creative people and strategists had to work especially together in order to increase the campaign efficiency by defining aim and related key performance indicators.

However, while representing the brand side as the senior brand manager, I have remarked that the collaboration must be considered wider than agency team work. In the new era of marketing, we have to be open to new collaboration areas as academic people, researchers, opinion leaders, new generation influencers, start-ups…

To expand relevantly the collaboration circle, brands and agencies must work together from the pre-brief diggings to post-campaign implications: We have to define together their partners by welcoming the diversity and to be innovatively collaborative.

AME Awards: As a strategic creative, what stand-out attributes do you recognize in award-winning creative and effective advertising…what do ads that have taken the brief and turned it into campaign that transforms opinions, evokes action and raises the bar for the brand have in common?

Canan Pehlivanoğlu Öke: In order to create campaign that transforms opinions, evokes action and raises the bar for the brand, we have to draw attention first to the refined brief with refined aim and refined KPI’s. To refine the brief, we must define the brand as a magnet: Mirroring was the old-school shortcut to increase the relevancy and the familiarity, but today it is quite impossible to find “a virgin insight” to really differentiate the brand and to create distinctiveness in the media clutter.

Secondly, we have never forgotten that the big distinctive idea must be sophisticatedly simple: Easiness to understand, easiness to reach hearts & minds, easiness to convince could be provided only if the idea is fresh and seamlessly elaborated.

Thirdly, in order to discover the freshly distinct idea, we need to be brave. We need to profit from the collaborative thinking process. 

AME Awards: Why are effectiveness competitions like the AME Awards important?

Canan Pehlivanoğlu Öke: Even if effectiveness is an old term, marketers have recently discovered the profound meaning and understood how crucial it is in the new era. Effectiveness criteria must be considered as global and glocal standards defined by respectful community welcoming diverse perspectives. So that, AME Awards is exceptional by providing a global platform to be challenged by global and diverse authorities.

AME Awards: Why did you agree to participate on this year’s AME Grand Jury and What do you hope to learn by viewing entries into this competition?

Canan Pehlivanoğlu Öke: Last year, I had participated to the Grand Jury within my strategist identity. It was an edutaining and a fulfilling experience satisfying my mind and my soul. This year, representing the brand side, I’m sure that I’ll have a completely different experience with the mindset shift. It’s exciting.

AME Awards: What is your all time, favorite most creative and effective ad and/or ads (share the link or a visual) and why in your opinion did they triumph?

Canan Pehlivanoğlu Öke: Volvo Truck – Live Test Series. A perfect campaign that attracts the global attention to the Volvo Truck. The distinctiveness of the campaign was sophisticatedly relevant for CFOs and buyers. We had been globally convinced by the innovative security claim of the brand. a

AME Awards: In your personal work what are the hallmarks of creative and strategic success? What campaign or campaigns are you most proud of?

Canan Pehlivanoğlu Öke: IsCep – The action is in your pocket Campaign for the mobile banking app of IsBank

Dimes – “Live an extraordinary ordinary life” brand positioning and new brand world for a fruit juice brand

Eti Canga – To the ones who loves it messy brand positioning and integrated brand world for chocolate bar brand.

AME Awards: What advice or guidelines would you give to potential entrants on earning an AME Award?

Canan Pehlivanoğlu Öke:

§  Collaborate to discover the fresh distinctiveness. People profoundly desire to be surprised.

§  Question priorities and aims. The more you refine the brief, the brighter the success is.

§  Be sure about the distinctiveness of your product / service / project. If you could not convince yourself, you would not persuade today’s realist minds.

§  Keep it simple even if you make a big job. The clearer the idea and the method are, the more marketer’s envy. Make them think they could do that, but they missed the chance.

AME Awards: AME’s Grand Jury, emanating from 5 regions around the globe provides the opportunity to earn trophies within a region and on the global stage.  Why in your opinion is the idea of AME’s Grand Jury judging both regional and then the entire Grand Jury judging all the Gold winning work to select Platinum winners and Best in Show important to both entrants and to jurors?

Canan Pehlivanoğlu Öke: The Grand Jury judging both regional and then all Gold winning work to select Platinum winners and Best in Show provides all entrants and all jurors to be challenged by glocal and global effectiveness criteria. It is a fulfilling experience for all of them to define and understand how a micro reality could transform macro perspective.

AME Awards: What is one secret of your success that no one knows about you (till now)?

Canan Pehlivanoğlu Öke: Curiosity, challenge addiction and positivism are the keys of my life. While curiosity and challenge addiction are bringing me failures and successes at the same time, positivism continuously keeps me at the game. I prefer to be the childlike one, even if the corporate life asks me to be the adult.

AME Awards: What philosophy or iconic individual inspires you in both your career and life?

Canan Pehlivanoğlu Öke: The next generation challengers professionally and individually inspire me. Believing in the journey to Mars feeds my optimism for the future of humanity. I especially follow the two inspirational guys who challenge the ordinary boundaries of the world: Elon Musk and Jack Ma.