Turkey will no longer use ‘tulip’ in promotion logos

Umut Erdem – ANKARA

Turkey is planning to introduce a new theme and a logo for its tourism and cultural promotion, abandoning the symbolic tulip in advertisements and “Turkey Home” campaign.

The Culture and Tourism Ministry announced an advertising tender, to be held on Jan. 8, 2019 in Berlin, to create a new branding identity, a new slogan and a new logo for Turkey, aiming to shift the country’s traditional image with a modern one.

The five-year advertisement campaign, “Turkey Home,” is planned to be petered out.

The newly appointed director of general promotion, Timuçin Güler, a former vice president of fuel retailer OPET, decided to initiate a tender to conduct and develop Turkey’s advertising campaign abroad.

In accordance with the new advertising campaign, Turkey’s branding identity and the promotion strategy is to be updated, the promotion logo and its subsequent slogan is to be improved, sub-campaigns, focusing on different aspects of tourism, intended for different target groups are to be developed and four TV commercial scripts are to be created to highlight features of Turkey’s tourism.

Turkey’s long-standing “tulip” logo is to be changed with a simple, plain and unique one that is easily translatable. According to the tender’s conditions, the new logo should not cause confusion with any other existing logo and should be prepared in 32 different languages.

Turkey’s effort on shifting the orientalist approach with a new modern one of high quality is aimed to change the perception of Turkey as a prestigious and well-liked country. The new advertising campaign is intended to increase the tourism volume to 50 million in 2019. The projected tourism volume of 2018 is 41 million. The ministry seeks to increase the share of tourism revenues in gross national product to 7-8 percent.