Finish's Glasses of Drought, created by Havas Istanbul in 2019, used five custom glasses modelled on drying Turkish lakes to confront water scarcity on World
ARCHIVEFinish Turns Turkish Lakes Into Drinking Glasses to Show a Nation Running Dry
Glasses of Drought is a 2019 direct activation campaign created by Havas Istanbul for Finish, the household dishwashing brand owned by Reckitt Benckiser, in which five custom drinking glasses were physically shaped like drying Turkish lakes and filled with water proportional to each lake's remaining volume, making Turkey's water shortage tangible for influential decision-makers on World Water Day.
Finish launched the campaign on 22 March 2019, timed precisely to World Water Day, at the Uludağ Economic Forum in Turkey. The venue was deliberate. The Uludağ Economic Forum draws government members, academics, chief executives, and media representatives, and the 2019 edition brought together approximately 2,200 such attendees, according to Ads of the World. Rather than a conventional print or broadcast execution, Havas Istanbul chose direct activation as the medium — placing the objects themselves into the hands of people with the authority and platform to act on the message.
The five glasses were each modelled on the topography of a specific drying Turkish lake: Seyfe, Suğla, Ilgın, Karataş, and Burdur, as documented by Ads of the World. Each glass's capacity was calibrated to reflect that lake's remaining water level, meaning some glasses could hold only a fraction of what a standard drinking vessel would contain. In Turkey, where water stress is an accelerating concern, that physical constraint carried immediate communicative force. The campaign sits within Finish's broader Turkish platform, branded Tomorrow's Water by Reckitt, which the company premised on the prospect of Turkey becoming water poor, as noted on Reckitt's own corporate channels. Glasses of Drought earned a Clapboard Score of 79 out of 100, reflecting strong conceptual integration and contextual precision.
Turkey faces a structurally worsening water shortage that gave the Glasses of Drought campaign genuine urgency rather than borrowed relevance. Reckitt's corporate reporting identifies Turkey as a market at risk of becoming water poor, providing Finish with a credible, country-specific rationale for investing in water conservation messaging rather than defaulting to product-led advertising. In Turkey, the combination of population growth, agricultural demand, and climate-driven precipitation decline has placed pressure on inland lakes and freshwater reserves at a pace that makes the category of household water use — including dishwashing — a legitimate site of public conversation.
Finish had already established a lineage of water awareness activity in Turkey before 2019. The brand partnered with National Geographic on a Turkish and Australian campaign beginning in 2016, according to Reckitt's own communications, producing a documentary titled 25 Litres that challenged viewers to imagine living on only 25 litres of water per day. Glasses of Drought built on that platform, sharpening the message from the hypothetical into the measurable. Where 25 Litres asked audiences to imagine scarcity, the 2019 campaign made it physical and immediate.
The competitive context for Finish in the Turkish household product market is defined primarily by Procter and Gamble's Cascade in global terms and by locally distributed private-label alternatives within Turkey itself. Finish's decision to anchor its brand positioning in environmental stewardship rather than purely in cleaning performance represents a strategic differentiation from performance-led rivals. The Uludağ Economic Forum targeting also reflects a media strategy built around earned influence rather than paid reach, concentrating impact among the approximately 2,200 attendees who shape policy, investment, and public discourse across Turkey, as reported by Ads of the World.
Havas Istanbul built Glasses of Drought around a single, disciplined creative idea: the drinking glass as data visualisation. Each of the five glasses was engineered to replicate the topographic profile of a specific Turkish lake — Seyfe, Suğla, Ilgın, Karataş, and Burdur — with the internal volume of each vessel precisely corresponding to that lake's remaining water level as a proportion of its original capacity, as documented by Ads of the World. The craft requirement was therefore both sculptural and scientific: the objects had to be physically credible as glassware while functioning as accurate analogues of ecological loss.
The campaign was led creatively by Chief Creative Officer Ergin Binyıldız and Creative Director Yavuzhan Gel at Havas Istanbul, according to adruby.com. The creative team comprised Serhan Koçak, Sezgin Bulut, and Anıl Süleyman Çınar. Agency production was managed by Sıla Salgın and Gözde Bilir, with client services directed by Berk Yılmaz, strategy directed by Ayça Çınar, and media directed by Didem Demiralp, as listed by adruby.com. Branded content production was handled by Circus and Contentine.
The campaign also extended into documentary form, a medium that deepened the storytelling beyond what a single activation object could carry. Finish's earlier Turkish work had already demonstrated the brand's willingness to commission long-form content, with the 25 Litres documentary produced in partnership with National Geographic, as noted by Reckitt. The documentary dimension of Glasses of Drought allowed the campaign to operate simultaneously as a high-impact physical intervention at the Uludağ Economic Forum and as a distributable piece of content capable of reaching audiences across Turkey who were not in the room. This dual structure — direct activation plus documentary — gave the campaign both precision and scale within the Turkish market.
ARCHIVENo verified third-party performance data for Glasses of Drought — such as measured shifts in brand sentiment, dishwasher water-saving behaviour, or earned media reach figures — is publicly available. What the public record does confirm, as reported by Ads of the World, is that the campaign reached approximately 2,200 attendees at the Uludağ Economic Forum, a group that included government officials, academics, chief executives, and media representatives operating within Turkey's policy and business ecosystem.
That audience profile is the campaign's most structurally significant result. Direct activation campaigns of this type are not optimised for mass reach; they are optimised for multiplier effect, placing a high-precision message with individuals who have disproportionate capacity to amplify, legislate, or fund responses to water shortage in Turkey. Distributing five lake-shaped glasses to forum attendees is, by design, an act of agenda-setting rather than awareness-building at scale.
The campaign's documentary component extended its potential reach beyond the forum, though precise viewership figures are not publicly documented. Finish's parent company Reckitt has publicly positioned the Tomorrow's Water platform — of which Glasses of Drought forms a part — as a long-term commitment to addressing water stress in Turkey, which suggests the 2019 activation was evaluated internally as part of a multi-year strategic programme rather than as a standalone campaign metric. The Clapboard Score of 79 out of 100 reflects the campaign's conceptual rigour, contextual specificity, and the precision with which its creative format served its strategic objective.
Glasses of Drought is a 2019 direct activation campaign by Havas Istanbul for Finish in Turkey. Five drinking glasses were shaped like drying Turkish lakes — Seyfe, Suğla, Ilgın, Karataş, and Burdur — each holding water proportional to that lake's remaining volume, making Turkey's water shortage physically tangible for forum attendees on World Water Day.
Finish launched Glasses of Drought on 22 March 2019, World Water Day. The activation took place at the Uludağ Economic Forum in Turkey, reaching approximately 2,200 attendees including government officials, academics, and chief executives, according to Ads of the World. The campaign was subsequently published in April 2019.
Havas Istanbul modelled the five glasses on Seyfe, Suğla, Ilgın, Karataş, and Burdur — all drying Turkish lakes, as documented by Ads of the World. Each glass's internal capacity was calibrated to reflect that lake's actual remaining water level, turning the object into a precise measure of ecological loss in Turkey.
Chief Creative Officer Ergin Binyıldız and Creative Director Yavuzhan Gel at Havas Istanbul led the campaign, according to adruby.com. The creative team included Serhan Koçak, Sezgin Bulut, and Anıl Süleyman Çınar, with strategy directed by Ayça Çınar and branded content produced by Circus and Contentine.
Glasses of Drought forms part of Finish's Tomorrow's Water platform in Turkey, a long-term initiative premised on Turkey becoming water poor, as described by Reckitt. The platform began in 2016 with a National Geographic partnership and the documentary 25 Litres, with the 2019 campaign deepening that commitment through direct, data-driven creative activation.
Glasses of Drought received a Clapboard Score of 79 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's conceptual precision, its disciplined use of the direct activation format, and the strategic logic of targeting Turkey's most influential decision-makers at the Uludağ Economic Forum on World Water Day 2019.
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