Istanbul Day 8 - Back to work

Today turned out to be pretty interesting with visits to Hurriyet Daily News (an English newspaper), Eczacibasi Group (another holding company), and Turk Telcom.

We started with the newspaper, where we all crammed into their tiny conference room. The building itself was nice and writers worked in an open floorplan of long desks with many computers in a row. This is similar to the setup I recall in the Google Dublin office and I assume it's typical of European companies. The discussion quickly turned to politics, even though I was more interested in the business of running a newspaper in Turkey. However, the editor offered an interesting framework for the news. He feels like are the five "stories" being told in one form or another in Turkey. These are:

1) The Armenian Genocide
2) Islam vs. Secularism
3) Honor killings
4) Status of women in Turkey
5) Freedom of expression in Turkey

Google any of those terms in order to find out more about them.

He also mentioned that he likes to hire writers to cover topics about their own culture. He doesn't want to hire a Canadian to come write about the Kurds, he wants a Kurd to write about the Kurdish conflict. I think this is a pretty good approach. He said they are more familiar with the issue and write with more passion, yet through the editorial process he can ensure they are presenting a balanced viewpoint. Seems like good management to me.

Censorship is an issue in the Turkish media, and especially self-censorship. One issue is that there are very few public records. For example, you can't just walk into the records office and say "I'd like a list of all the property owned by so-and-so."

From a business perspective, advertising isn't very mature in Turkey yet. The biggest advertisers are P&G and Turkcell. As a result, his paper lost $2 million last year. I guess newspapers are struggling worldwide for readership. He felt that his paper won't exist in a paper format 5 years from now and I'd guess that this has to do with Turkey's young population and their willingness to embrace new technology. (Most Turks are under 35.) This is also why Garanti Bank has been so successful launching new products and features.

Eczacibasi was another great visit and they welcomed us with open arms. Their building is amazingly beautiful, just like the design of their bathroom products (sinks, faucets, etc.) They had quite a spread of snacks and beverages in their 21st story conference room with panoramic views of Istanbul. In general, the company felt much more "modern" than the other holding company we visited, the Dogan Group. The main difference I noticed was that with Eczacibasi you could actually see the synergy between the companies they owned whereas Dogan felt like a random hodge-podge of companies.

They have a ton of joint ventures and this is a good way for foreign companies to enter the Turkish market. Many are 50/50, which is a bit unusual but the business development manager who gave the presentation said they work quite well. Many are with German and American companies, so they know these cultures and how to do business with them. Sinan (biz dev manager) indicated that Russia would be the next country they probably do big JVs with.

The question of innovation came up again and they take innovation very seriously. In fact, they have a direct report to the CEO who is a sort of innovation coordinator -- this seems like something I'd like to do! Similar to other organizations, they have a system where employees can submit ideas and be rewarded for those that result in products. They also have an annual "Innovation Day" where they update everyone in the company on innovations submitted by employees.

When I asked about the biggest cultural challenge working with Americans, Sinan said it was distance and a lack of knowledge. Basically, American's don't do their homework on Turkey and have a lot of misconceptions. Many don't do their market research. And they don't know the story of Turkey. On a side note, I think you have to be an ex-supermodel in order to work here if you're a woman (judging by the employees we met).

Our next stop was Turk Telcom. We met with one of their VPs who previously spent 16 years in the US, some of that time working at Yahoo!. They are the #1 DSL provider in Turkey and have 6M customers (abouot 92% market share). They also deliver landline telephone service.

Turk Telcom was government owned until about 2005 and the Turkish goverment is still a major shareholder. It's weird to think that they're a 168 year old company...you don't find many of those in America. Lately though, they've been shifting their strategy to actually deliver what customers want, which didn't matter in the past because they had a monopoly and customer had to accept whatever they delivered.