Title	LETTERS TO GALLIPOLI
Brand	TURKCELL
Product/Service	LETTERS TO GALLIPOLI
Category	B04. Overall Functional Design
Entrant	TURKCELL Istanbul, TURKEY
Idea Creation	TURKCELL Istanbul, TURKEY

Name	Company	Position
Ebru Calis	Turkcell	Digital Communications Specialist
Batuhan Suzer	Pure New Media	Business Director

The Campaign

The project, Çanakkale’ye Mektuplar places its roots to the idea of bringing life to the soldiers who have lost their lives a decade ago, in the First World War, by answering their never replied letters. Both of the nations, Turks and Anzacs, who fought in Gallipoli are still sensitive about the issue and wish to preserve the bond. We wanted to contribute to this goodwill using our expertise in the communication sector. Also in a world so digitally evolved, it is always a challenge to rely on user generated content for a project since even a tweet is a burden. Nevertheless, we took the challenge and broke a well-established judgement by getting our users to write page long letters for people they didn’t even know!

Creative Execution

Çanakkale’ye Mektuplar started off as an integrated project since its objective was to honor the lost souls of Gallipoli, we wanted to do it on many levels. First we released a short video to let people know about the project, the struggles those soldiers were going through and the ways they could contribute to the project. Then, on our website we collected user generated content. That content wasn’t left on the online platform but the letters people wrote became a tree, in a running marathon organized in Gallipoli, in the hands of peace volunteers.