How Türk Ekonomi Bankası Used Community Identity to Reframe Banking in Turkey
Türk Ekonomi Bankası released three distinct narrative films in Turkey in May 2018, produced by agency Tick Tock Boom, each built around a different community occasion — Farmer's Day, International Women's Day, and a tennis participation initiative titled We Are Tennis — forming a socially oriented communication effort rooted in themes of community, growth, perseverance, and equality.
The three films were treated as separate communication initiatives within TEB's 2018 reporting rather than as a single unified campaign, according to Clapboard's editorial documentation and corroborated by reporting from altinorumcek.com. Each film addressed a distinct audience and cultural moment: the Farmer's Day film spoke to agricultural communities and the bank's rural relationships, the International Women's Day film — titled in Turkish as "El Alem Ne Der?" — confronted social judgement faced by women, and We Are Tennis invited broader public participation in the sport as both a community and aspirational identity. Together, the three pieces operate under TEB's wider socially oriented communication strategy developed beneath its TEB BNP Paribas identity, which has consistently emphasised inclusion, empowerment, and community participation, as noted in lineage reporting sourced from altinorumcek.com and mediacat.com. The geographic market is Turkey, and all three films were published there in May 2018. The initiative represents a deliberate shift away from product-led banking communication toward narrative-led content that uses shared social occasions as its organising idea. Türk Ekonomi Bankası's Clapboard Score for this body of work stands at 58 out of 100, reflecting competent execution of an emotionally intelligent strategic approach that nonetheless remains constrained by the structural conventions of purpose-driven banking advertising.
Türk Ekonomi Bankası positioned community membership — not product features — as the emotional entry point for its 2018 communications. Turkey's banking sector provided both the competitive pressure and the cultural context for this decision. According to worldfinance.com, Turkey had 51 banks operating in 2018, with banking accounting for more than 70% of the country's broader financial-services industry. That density of competition made functional product differentiation increasingly difficult, pushing banks toward values-based positioning. Total banking-sector assets in Turkey reached approximately TRY 3.9 trillion at year-end 2018, equating to approximately 104% of GDP, according to Teb Com Tr, up from 66% of GDP in 2007 — a figure that underscores how central the sector had become to the national economy.
In this environment, TEB's decision to anchor three films to Farmer's Day, International Women's Day, and grassroots tennis participation reflects a calculated attempt to occupy cultural territory that competitors such as Garanti BBVA and İş Bankası also pursue through social and community-driven advertising. Rather than competing on rate or product breadth, TEB's 2018 work used shared social identity — farmer, woman, tennis participant — as a proxy for values alignment. The International Women's Day film in particular, framed around the Turkish phrase "El Alem Ne Der?" (roughly, "What will people say?"), addressed the social pressures women face directly, a strategy that required the bank to take a legible public position rather than retreat into safe inspirational messaging. According to retailbankerinternational.com, Turkey's banking market included approximately 66 million credit cards and 146 million debit cards in 2018, pointing to a digitally active, financially engaged population that was also deeply embedded in social and cultural life — precisely the audience TEB's narrative approach was designed to reach.
Tick Tock Boom, the Istanbul-based agency responsible for the creative work, built all three films under a single creative leadership structure. Gürkan Gürel served as both creative director and director across the initiative, with copywriting shared between Gürel and Gözde İlhan, according to Clapboard's production credits documentation. Production was handled by Pre Prodüksiyon, with account management led by Elif Biricik Korcum and Bahriye Sarıkaya. The coherence of creative direction across three thematically distinct films — agricultural community, gender equality, and sports participation — required Gürel to modulate tone without losing a unifying sensibility, a structural challenge that the credits themselves confirm was resolved by keeping creative control concentrated rather than distributed.
Each of the three films relied on character-driven narrative rather than product demonstration, a deliberate craft choice that placed storytelling craft and casting authenticity above conventional banking-advertisement conventions. The We Are Tennis film leaned into co-creation and user-generated visual content, a strategy that earned it specific recognition for the use of photography and images at the Communicator Awards, as reported by altinorumcek.com. This approach — inviting audience participation into the visual language of the film — distinguished We Are Tennis from the more conventionally produced Farmer's Day and Women's Day pieces. The International Women's Day film used its direct, question-posing title to establish confrontational intimacy with its subject, while the Farmer's Day film drew on documentary-adjacent aesthetics appropriate to its rural subject. Across all three, the production company Pre Prodüksiyon executed work that served the narrative ambitions of the briefs without visible production excess, keeping the films grounded in the everyday emotional registers of their respective communities.
Verified performance data specific to audience reach, conversion, or media delivery for this body of work is not publicly available in full. The award record, however, provides a documented proxy for industry assessment. We Are Tennis earned a Bronze award for Mobile Campaigns at IAB Mixx Turkey in 2018, according to altinorumcek.com. The same film received two Communicator Awards — both Awards of Distinction — for co-creation and user-generated content, and for use of photography and images, as reported by altinorumcek.com. We Are Tennis also won three Stevie Awards in 2018, including Gold for Sales: Other and Silver for Marketing Campaign of the Year in the Entertainment category, as documented by altinorumcek.com and teb.com.tr.
The concentration of recognition on We Are Tennis rather than equally across all three films is itself informative. The participatory mechanics of the tennis initiative — which generated user content and enabled co-creation — produced measurable engagement structures that lent themselves to award entry in performance and digital categories, whereas the Farmer's Day and International Women's Day films operated on more conventional broadcast-narrative terms. Structurally, the broader body of work demonstrates that TEB's 2018 approach succeeded most demonstrably where it moved beyond passive viewing toward active audience participation. The Communicator Award recognition for photography specifically confirms that the visual strategy of We Are Tennis achieved a level of craft distinction that reviewers found genuinely differentiated from standard banking-sector digital content produced in Turkey that year.
Türk Ekonomi Bankası produced three narrative films in Turkey in 2018 through agency Tick Tock Boom. Each film addressed a distinct community occasion — Farmer's Day, International Women's Day, and a tennis participation initiative called We Are Tennis — built around themes of community, equality, and perseverance rather than banking products.
Tick Tock Boom, the Istanbul-based agency, created all three films. Gürkan Gürel served as both creative director and director, with copywriting by Gürel and Gözde İlhan. Production was handled by Pre Prodüksiyon, and account management was led by Elif Biricik Korcum and Bahriye Sarıkaya, according to Clapboard's production credits.
We Are Tennis earned a Bronze at IAB Mixx Turkey for Mobile Campaigns, two Communicator Awards of Distinction for co-creation and photography, and three Stevie Awards including Gold for Sales: Other, all in 2018, as reported by altinorumcek.com and teb.com.tr. The Farmer's Day and Women's Day films were not separately recognised in documented award records.
TEB's 2015 Pratik commercial, published on March 2, 2015, was service- and product-led, according to altinorumcek.com. The 2018 films shifted the organising idea entirely, using social occasions and community identities — farmers, women, tennis participants — as the emotional entry point, moving away from product demonstration toward values-based narrative storytelling.
Turkey had 51 banks operating in 2018, according to worldfinance.com, with banking representing more than 70% of the broader financial-services industry. Competitors including Garanti BBVA and İş Bankası also pursued community-driven advertising, making values-based positioning a contested but strategically rational differentiator for TEB in that market environment.
Türk Ekonomi Bankası's 2018 body of work receives a Clapboard Score of 58 out of 100. The score reflects competent emotional strategy and documented award recognition, particularly for We Are Tennis, while acknowledging that the work remains partly constrained by the structural conventions common to purpose-driven banking advertising produced in Turkey during this period.
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