Marketing Intelligence Lead, Turkcell 

Describe your journey to becoming a researcher at Turkcell.

I began my career at GfK in 2005 where I was responsible for major and small domestic appliance categories in the retail audit department. After about two years, I accepted a job offer from Synovate (today’s IPSOS) as a telecom, FMCG and tobacco research manager. Those five years were the best and most challenging years of my career. During that period, the telecom sector in Turkey was booming and the results and insights we obtained from our research were fascinating. I was impressed by the razzle-dazzle and the enthusiasm of the category. For a few years I dreamed of working at Turkcell, which was the market leader in Turkey and among the Top 5 GSM companies in Europe. I found myself thinking about how Turkcell and I would mutually benefit – how I could add value to their business. My dreams finally came true in 2011 and I have been the marketing intelligence lead ever since.  

I still love deep-diving subjects each and every day.

What are some of the day-to-day challenges you face as a researcher?

Telecommunications is the fastest-growing sector all over the world. It’s even faster than FMCG in terms of new product launches, tariffs, apps and ads. Working in this sector is a challenge. For instance, we conduct post-test surveys for almost 250 TV ads per year. Trends that are very inspiring today may be replaced by something else in a very short period of time. As a result, we must track changes weekly or even daily as opposed to monthly, quarterly or yearly.

Among this chaos, every task is urgent – all the reports are due yesterday. To be able to survive this world, one has to be forward-looking, alert and work with fast-delivering companies. Being fast is the biggest challenge and it makes my job more exciting.

Do you prefer to work with qualitative or quantitative methodolo...