Understanding the subtleties and nuances of different cultures and subcultures can give a huge boost to any product launch, so why are so many businesses trying to create a campaign to suit a different culture, rather than creating a product specifically for that culture? In this episode, Ellie speaks to Serdar Paktin, founder of holistic sense-making agency, Pakt, to find out more about how understanding a culture can not only improve your current offerings but create new opportunities too.
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:07:10
Ellie
I am talking today on the podcast to Serdar Paktin in from Pakt. Thank you so
much for being on our podcast.
00:00:07:17 - 00:00:08:19
Serdar Paktin
Thank you for inviting me.
00:00:09:00 - 00:00:16:07
Ellie
So I'm really excited to learn where your agency came from. So a bit about your
background and a bit about how you started your agency.
00:00:16:21 - 00:00:44:16
Serdar Paktin
I was working as a strategist and I was getting on the side projects from UK and
overseas agencies when I lived in Istanbul. I was working as a cultural inside
semiotics consultant for global agencies that are focussing on Turkey, and then I
extended doing that to Middle East and North Africa. And when I started doing my
own business, I had one thing - the international on the sides, and I had one local
brands on the other side.
00:00:44:21 - 00:00:55:03
Serdar Paktin
And the international side of the business grew by itself. Me, without investing any
time in it. I was investing all the time to my Turkish clients, and it didn't really pick
up.
00:00:55:03 - 00:00:55:14
Ellie
Right.
00:00:55:14 - 00:01:08:14
Serdar Paktin
It was like a clear decision which direction to go. And I moved the agency to
London in 2018. And since then I'm working with international clients and other
agencies that we helped to discover.
00:01:08:14 - 00:01:32:07
Serdar Paktin
Turkey, Middle East and North Africa region. And we were extending beyond that
to more often non-Western markets. Pakt is a holistic sense making agency. We
focus on cross-cultural understanding and cultural insights to help our clients make
better decisions across cultures and understanding their audiences, discovering
opportunity areas in different cultural spaces, so to speak.
00:01:32:18 - 00:01:37:01
Ellie
Have you managed to stop your clients from making any major faux pas?
00:01:37:08 - 00:02:12:10
Serdar Paktin
I believe that we made a few things with Netflix, for instance, in 2019 made their
first Turkish Netflix original, which was a super hero saving Istanbul from immortal
evil people. And that didn't really pick up. In its first season, I think they were
wondering what they did wrong, and we worked on a bigger semiotics project. We
watched more than 50 titles: Netflix and non-Netflix; International and local; TV
series and movies, and we came up with a map of storyline and characters and
production, and we came up saying:
"These are the insights.
00:02:12:10 - 00:02:37:05
Serdar Paktin
These are what you should focus on and is what you're doing wrong." One of the
major things is that Turkey and most Middle East and Eastern markets are
collectivist cultures. So it's based on the community rather than the individual. And
most of the Western countries are based on individuals. Therefore, in a Western
market, a superhero story might be interesting because it's based on an individual
accomplishing something.
00:02:37:05 - 00:02:46:03
Serdar Paktin
But in the Eastern market, it is more focussing on the community about
neighbourhoods, about families. So there is more of a community in there and00:02:46:09 - 00:02:47:19
Ellie
It just wasn't resonating at all.
00:02:47:19 - 00:03:05:22
Serdar Paktin
Exactly. So, a super superhero saving Istanbul is not resonating and they also
prefer realistic characters, somebody they could really sit down at a dinner table
and have a conversation with. By the time when we were doing the research, I
visited Istanbul and I was talking to this cab driver and I said: "Look, what do you
think about the superhero on Netflix?"
00:03:06:05 - 00:03:31:01
Serdar Paktin
He said: "We are all superheroes making home at night. You don't need somebody
saving the whole city, making home safe, feeding your family is good enough to be
a superhero. For your community." Since then, Netflix is creating really successful
series in Turkey, Netflix originals, and they also recently published a report how
much they contribute to the Turkish economy in the last three years.
00:03:31:02 - 00:03:36:04
Serdar Paktin
And I think we have part in that, but I can't really claim that part of it.
00:03:36:04 - 00:03:42:01
Ellie
Damn it! You can't claim it was solely you, but you were part of it. That's amazing -
how exciting!
00:03:42:01 - 00:04:02:24
Serdar Paktin
It is, as you said, we help them understand the culture, the cultural codes in that
market, and we helped them make better decisions or design new products or
develop new services for that cultural opportunity in that region, in that subculture.
It doesn't have to be different cultures. It could be a subculture within a country as
well, because cyclists, it is a culture.
00:04:03:01 - 00:04:11:03
Serdar Paktin
You have to understand cyclists to be able to provide them value. Vegans,
vegetarians, they all have their own culture underneath that.
00:04:11:03 - 00:04:23:00
Ellie
That's brilliant. What's it like starting an agency in a new country? Had you lived in
London before, or did you just come over completely fresh, thinking: "New country,
new agency? Here I go!"
00:04:23:06 - 00:04:48:02
Serdar Paktin
Well, I'd never been to the UK before. I came here first time in 2016 or 17. By the
time I was contemplating about moving abroad and I had two options be it's either
New York or London, and I lived in New York before and that's why that was my
first choice. But I had a project in New York and I spent a month there and I
decided: "No, New York is no longer where I want to live."
00:04:48:12 - 00:05:10:24
Serdar Paktin
And then I came to London and the first step out of this tube, looking around,
seeing the people, I said: "I could live here!" But also UK had a visa deal with
Turkey. So it was easier to get a visa. I already have clients here, so it was also
another advantage to choose here. And there's also little time difference between
Turkey and London and also it's quicker to fly in between.
00:05:11:03 - 00:05:29:22
Serdar Paktin
These are the four main points why I chose London, and that was my first time
moving here. So it was difficult because my background is in cultural studies that
have focus on American studies. So I already knew American culture, American
type of business, and American way of doing things. But the British way of doing
things and British business culture was a novelty to me.
00:05:30:00 - 00:05:39:11
Ellie
That's really interesting. So as a cultural insight specialist, what are the business
cultural differences then between the US and the UK?
00:05:39:22 - 00:06:02:12
Serdar Paktin
The polite indirectness in the culture is the major thing. I'm good at understanding
it, but implementing it, I'm still having difficulties. Americans are very direct and
Turks are quite direct as well. The UK is not as easy as the US to penetrate as an
outsider. Once you come in, it would need some time for the community to accept
you.
00:06:02:13 - 00:06:21:16
Serdar Paktin
My first years were trying to prove myself again to ex-clients, long standing
relationship. Well, when you're in the country, I think that relationship changes a bit
to them, until once again, we are able to get to that point. US is more open to
people who want to do things, and once you start creating it, they just let you in.
00:06:21:16 - 00:06:27:06
Serdar Paktin
As long as you're producing value. This is more of community that's letting you in
slowly in the UK.
00:06:27:09 - 00:06:28:16
Ellie
A bit more sceptical.
00:06:28:19 - 00:06:46:07
Serdar Paktin
I would say so, yeah, but that's also probably related to that long standing culture
of business. US in comparison to UK is just the last few hundred years and there's
this almost a thousand years of business tradition here and it's quite
understandable to have that checkpoint, so to speak.
00:06:46:19 - 00:07:02:23
Ellie
So how do you find your clients for Pakt? Is it a case of you going in, and trying to
source and trying to suss out who might have a need for your services or when
you have the need for cultural insights? Is it really clear and is it really apparent?
00:07:03:03 - 00:07:27:18
Serdar Paktin
My background is in strategy. So I have always been a strategist and then I moved
into a niche part of strategy, into cultural insights, into semiotics. And most of my
clients have come to me through existing clients and through referrals. And as I
said, I'm a strategist, so I'm not really good at new business. So I am not
really creating new business myself by reaching out to people and creating
connections -
00:07:27:18 - 00:07:30:20
Serdar Paktin
Most of my business still comes from referrals and networks.
00:07:30:24 - 00:07:32:12
Ellie
A brilliant way to get your new business.
00:07:32:18 - 00:07:57:13
Serdar Paktin
Yeah, it means that you're doing a good job, so that they're referring to other
people, which is great. I think you need to be able to get good at creating new
business through new relationships. Out of blue or reaching out to your potential
clients. And one of my methods is to build hypothesis on opportunity areas
because our skill set is to find opportunities within a cultural space and presenting
it to potential clients.
00:07:57:13 - 00:08:05:13
Serdar Paktin
But as long as they're not aware of that opportunity, that's not really resonating
with them. So it was a good experiment, but it's not the way forward, apparently!
00:08:05:13 - 00:08:13:21
Ellie
You were talking to yourself, I imagine. You were like: "There's this space where
you could do this!" And they're like: "What is that? I don't want to do that. We're not
doing that." So you're like, "Oh, I see."
00:08:13:21 - 00:08:19:04
Ellie
What have been your key challenges and learnings the past four years?
00:08:19:08 - 00:08:41:06
Serdar Paktin
It's a difficult question. There's so many things that's rushing to my mind
immediately. First thing, we have a saying: "A tailor cannot mend his own clothes
or a doctor cannot cure themselves." Even though we consult with our clients. You
need to listen to your target audience. You need to know who they are and shape
your value proposition and your benefits towards their understanding.
00:08:41:06 - 00:08:59:13
Serdar Paktin
When I first came in, I wasn't doing that really. I was doing what I believed would
be the meaningful thing and then just implementing it, not even testing it, not even
thinking through it. Just going straight ahead. Like any other entrepreneur - When
we talk to them,
we say: "That's not the way forward." And then doing it yourself is quite ironic.
00:08:59:17 - 00:09:13:14
Ellie
Agency founders do that all the time, though. You can do the do for your clients,
but actually when it comes to yourself or your self-promotion or web development
agencies that never work on their own website, because you don't fix yourself. It's
interesting, isn't it?
00:09:13:19 - 00:09:19:05
Serdar Paktin
That's interesting. We know how to do it and we don't really do it for ourselves, and
it's very ironic.
00:09:19:05 - 00:09:31:16
Serdar Paktin
Second thing I would say, most of the agencies in our space, like working with
cultural insights and semiotics, when I first moved in, I was doing this research and
I realised that we were all trying to sell the methodology.
00:09:31:16 - 00:09:50:07
Serdar Paktin
It is like a car company trying to sell VDU machine engineering. But a car company
sells mobility. We get you from point A to point B and people who buy the car does
not really care if it's machine engineering or AI technology: "Whatever you do, you
do it. Just give me the product and I'm here for the benefit that the product
provides me."
00:09:50:07 - 00:10:13:16
Serdar Paktin
And the agencies, we're more focussing on the methodology rather than the
outcome or the benefits that they are providing for their clients. So I try to focus on
that and I think I didn't really do it a good way because I was also focussing on
something missing the point rather than the benefits. After doing it for two years,
the pandemic gave you quite an extensive time to think about these kind of things
that are00:10:13:17 - 00:10:16:04
Ellie
Two years of some solid thinking time.
[LAUGHS]
00:10:16:16 - 00:10:40:01
Serdar Paktin
I realised: "I'm doing everything wrong!" And I'm still not doing everything right, but
I'm working on it to realise how to simplify things, turn it into a storytelling approach
and then make it very clear and simple for clients to understand what benefit
you're providing them. And as you can see, I'm still not really good at it.
00:10:40:12 - 00:10:50:21
Ellie
I think you're doing fine. Agency founders are going to be listening to this podcast.
In terms of cultural analysis, what would you say the key benefits are for them
doing a real deep dive?
00:10:51:11 - 00:11:16:13
Serdar Paktin
I can say two major things. One, to avoid any major mistakes that they wouldn't
realise in their branding strategy, product development, that's going to take them a
long time. Investing in a cultural analysis beforehand saves a lot of time and
money. For instance, this is from a very early project. We were working on a soup
product and the soup product was going to be liquid form and we were focussing
on the Turkish market again.
00:11:16:13 - 00:11:43:20
Serdar Paktin
And then at the end of the project we came up with soup means nutrition in Turkey
- could be a full meal by itself, but in a Western culture, soup is more liquid
because it's regarded as an appetiser mostly and then if they have the assumption
of a soup in a Western sense and they implemented a liquid form soup into a bottle
or a box and put it on the shelf and then it didn't work, it was going to be first: "Did
we do something wrong with the shelf choice that we made in there?"
00:11:43:20 - 00:11:57:05
Serdar Paktin
And then it was going to be the branding and the packaging. And then when you
come to the content itself as it's meaningful or not, what's going to be the last thing
that they want to think? When it becomes the first thing that you think it avoids all
that big layering of mistakes.
00:11:57:11 - 00:12:01:01
Ellie
Yeah! All of that old hoo-ha! You want your products to be the most impactful,
right?
00:12:01:10 - 00:12:26:10
Serdar Paktin
Focussing on the content and the semiotics and the cultural codes of your market
gives you all the clues. What your product should be, how it should speak, what it
should present as a benefit. As cultural codes define our preferences and beliefs
collectively. They speak about consumer psychology. But before psychology,
comes culture and our decisions and behaviours are automatically defined in our
culture.
00:12:26:10 - 00:12:41:06
Serdar Paktin
And if you understand the cultural codes, you know what moves people or what
people think is meaningful or not. And by that you avoid
doing a lot of mistakes in designing and implementing and executing and market
entry. But it saves a lot of time and money.
00:12:41:06 - 00:12:53:17
Serdar Paktin
Second thing - it could help them discover new opportunity areas: Developing new
products, new services for that cultural space, or pivoting their products to the
needs of those spaces.
00:12:53:17 - 00:13:24:06
Serdar Paktin
For instance, we had this talk with a major music streaming platform before they
were going to penetrate into Middle East, but the music listening habits and what
people expect from music and when they listen to music, why they listen to music
is different than the Western audience. So if you are going to enter the Middle
Eastern market, you need to pivot your product a bit to reflect the needs and the
culture of that thing, because music is a cultural product and you can't just
implement a global product into the whole world the way it is.
00:13:24:11 - 00:13:46:12
Serdar Paktin
And Facebook and Netflix understand this a lot, and they do a lot of research in
understanding different cultural spaces, and they implement that. So you can see
the success of Netflix originals in regional spaces because they do these
overarching cultures. They do one for the Turkish Netflix audience and sell it to the
whole region. Taking an Israeli or Lebanese Netflix original, selling to the whole
region.
00:13:46:12 - 00:13:59:08
Serdar Paktin
And then they go to global scale. It's like Casa de Papel or Squid Game. They are
supposed to be regional products, but they got something right in a global sense
and they exceeded beyond expectation.
00:13:59:08 - 00:14:19:07
Serdar Paktin
To summarise: By doing this cultural analysis, agencies and brands could avoid
doing major mistakes in different markets, in different cultural spaces, or discover
new opportunity areas in those cultural spaces to build new products and services
or pivoting their brands and positioning into those cultural spaces.
00:14:19:20 - 00:14:31:04
Ellie
That's brilliant. Is the majority of your work in other countries or like you said, is it
becoming more about the sub communities, like the way you speak to cyclists and
their interests or vegans like you said?
00:14:31:06 - 00:14:58:15
Serdar Paktin
I mean, I can see that there is work being done towards subcultures but they're not
still doing with a cultural emphasis on it. Still, the creative agencies do it in their
own way. I don't think they do it with a cultural emphasis on it, but also I don't know
the whole space. So it's my assumption, but it's still - more of a regional, local and
national cultures are the main essence of this kind of work, but I think it's already
moving to that space.
00:14:58:15 - 00:15:23:04
Serdar Paktin
But it is still done by not cultural experts - like mostly creators and other kinds of
researchers, I guess. So we should move the subcultures into the cultural domain
in terms of understanding their semiotics, understanding their cultural codes, with
cyclists, with vegan, with weekend campers - they all have a certain code of
conduct and cultural codes, and there's certain things that they aspire to.
00:15:23:04 - 00:15:29:16
Serdar Paktin
And I'm giving cyclists and vegans as an example because those are the most
obvious ones that we can relate to.
00:15:29:23 - 00:15:35:11
Ellie
Absolutely. So what is next for Pakt - what's coming up? What do you see
happening in the next couple of years?
00:15:36:02 - 00:15:57:12
Serdar Paktin
Great question. We had two years hold, so we want to continue where we left off in
2020 because it was like first two years in the UK. We just established and got into
a steady cash flow and growth and that stopped where it was. And there was
literally no work in 2020, because what we do is new opportunities, new spaces
and everybody retreated back to00:15:57:12 - 00:15:59:19
Ellie
No one was going anywhere!
00:16:00:01 - 00:16:10:17
Serdar Paktin
Exactly. Everybody was in their safe space and that's why we didn't have any
work. But now with the pandemic reasonably under control, apparently, and the
economy is going somewhere.
[LAUGHS]
00:16:11:23 - 00:16:14:16
Ellie
The economy is doing something, who knows?
00:16:16:13 - 00:16:17:10
Serdar Paktin
Definitely!
00:16:17:10 - 00:16:17:18
Ellie
[LAUGHS]
00:16:17:18 - 00:16:45:14
Serdar Paktin
Our next two years will be getting back on track and growing in the UK and
hopefully growing our team here and doing more cultural work on a broader
regional and cultural framework. We are still mostly doing the Islamic markets but
we want to extend beyond that and that's one of our main goals to get projects
going beyond regional cultures and also going into different subcultures.
00:16:45:14 - 00:17:04:16
Serdar Paktin
And not only discovering the culture but also imagining a future in those cultures.
How are things going to be meaningful towards the future? And discovering those
cultural spaces, that's going to be more meaningful in the following five to ten
years. More into connecting futures with cultural analysis and mashing up a
methodology out of that?
00:17:05:01 - 00:17:07:08
Ellie
What? Almost predicting trends that there may be?
00:17:07:24 - 00:17:22:07
Serdar Paktin
It's not really predicting trends, but it's more like a personalised meaningful area
discoveries towards the future. It's more than what's going to be meaningful, what's
going to be meaningful for you as a client or as an actor in that space.
00:17:22:19 - 00:17:33:02
Ellie
Exciting times coming up. Serdar, thank-you so much for being on the podcast. It's
been really eye opening in a part of agency life that I really haven't given much
thought to. So thank you so much for sharing that with us.
00:17:33:14 - 00:17:39:14
Serdar Paktin
Thank you for inviting me and all these great questions, because I wouldn't be able
to explain them otherwise without your questions.
00:17:39:17 - 00:17:40:09
Ellie
My pleasure.
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:07:10
Ellie
I am talking today on the podcast to Serdar Paktin in from Pakt. Thank you so
much for being on our podcast.
00:00:07:17 - 00:00:08:19
Serdar Paktin
Thank you for inviting me.
00:00:09:00 - 00:00:16:07
Ellie
So I'm really excited to learn where your agency came from. So a bit about your
background and a bit about how you started your agency.
00:00:16:21 - 00:00:44:16
Serdar Paktin
I was working as a strategist and I was getting on the side projects from UK and
overseas agencies when I lived in Istanbul. I was working as a cultural inside
semiotics consultant for global agencies that are focussing on Turkey, and then I
extended doing that to Middle East and North Africa. And when I started doing my
own business, I had one thing - the international on the sides, and I had one local
brands on the other side.
00:00:44:21 - 00:00:55:03
Serdar Paktin
And the international side of the business grew by itself. Me, without investing any
time in it. I was investing all the time to my Turkish clients, and it didn't really pick
up.
00:00:55:03 - 00:00:55:14
Ellie
Right.
00:00:55:14 - 00:01:08:14
Serdar Paktin
It was like a clear decision which direction to go. And I moved the agency to
London in 2018. And since then I'm working with international clients and other
agencies that we helped to discover.
00:01:08:14 - 00:01:32:07
Serdar Paktin
Turkey, Middle East and North Africa region. And we were extending beyond that
to more often non-Western markets. Pakt is a holistic sense making agency. We
focus on cross-cultural understanding and cultural insights to help our clients make
better decisions across cultures and understanding their audiences, discovering
opportunity areas in different cultural spaces, so to speak.
00:01:32:18 - 00:01:37:01
Ellie
Have you managed to stop your clients from making any major faux pas?
00:01:37:08 - 00:02:12:10
Serdar Paktin
I believe that we made a few things with Netflix, for instance, in 2019 made their
first Turkish Netflix original, which was a super hero saving Istanbul from immortal
evil people. And that didn't really pick up. In its first season, I think they were
wondering what they did wrong, and we worked on a bigger semiotics project. We
watched more than 50 titles: Netflix and non-Netflix; International and local; TV
series and movies, and we came up with a map of storyline and characters and
production, and we came up saying:
"These are the insights.
00:02:12:10 - 00:02:37:05
Serdar Paktin
These are what you should focus on and is what you're doing wrong." One of the
major things is that Turkey and most Middle East and Eastern markets are
collectivist cultures. So it's based on the community rather than the individual. And
most of the Western countries are based on individuals. Therefore, in a Western
market, a superhero story might be interesting because it's based on an individual
accomplishing something.
00:02:37:05 - 00:02:46:03
Serdar Paktin
But in the Eastern market, it is more focussing on the community about
neighbourhoods, about families. So there is more of a community in there and00:02:46:09 - 00:02:47:19
Ellie
It just wasn't resonating at all.
00:02:47:19 - 00:03:05:22
Serdar Paktin
Exactly. So, a super superhero saving Istanbul is not resonating and they also
prefer realistic characters, somebody they could really sit down at a dinner table
and have a conversation with. By the time when we were doing the research, I
visited Istanbul and I was talking to this cab driver and I said: "Look, what do you
think about the superhero on Netflix?"
00:03:06:05 - 00:03:31:01
Serdar Paktin
He said: "We are all superheroes making home at night. You don't need somebody
saving the whole city, making home safe, feeding your family is good enough to be
a superhero. For your community." Since then, Netflix is creating really successful
series in Turkey, Netflix originals, and they also recently published a report how
much they contribute to the Turkish economy in the last three years.
00:03:31:02 - 00:03:36:04
Serdar Paktin
And I think we have part in that, but I can't really claim that part of it.
00:03:36:04 - 00:03:42:01
Ellie
Damn it! You can't claim it was solely you, but you were part of it. That's amazing -
how exciting!
00:03:42:01 - 00:04:02:24
Serdar Paktin
It is, as you said, we help them understand the culture, the cultural codes in that
market, and we helped them make better decisions or design new products or
develop new services for that cultural opportunity in that region, in that subculture.
It doesn't have to be different cultures. It could be a subculture within a country as
well, because cyclists, it is a culture.
00:04:03:01 - 00:04:11:03
Serdar Paktin
You have to understand cyclists to be able to provide them value. Vegans,
vegetarians, they all have their own culture underneath that.
00:04:11:03 - 00:04:23:00
Ellie
That's brilliant. What's it like starting an agency in a new country? Had you lived in
London before, or did you just come over completely fresh, thinking: "New country,
new agency? Here I go!"
00:04:23:06 - 00:04:48:02
Serdar Paktin
Well, I'd never been to the UK before. I came here first time in 2016 or 17. By the
time I was contemplating about moving abroad and I had two options be it's either
New York or London, and I lived in New York before and that's why that was my
first choice. But I had a project in New York and I spent a month there and I
decided: "No, New York is no longer where I want to live."
00:04:48:12 - 00:05:10:24
Serdar Paktin
And then I came to London and the first step out of this tube, looking around,
seeing the people, I said: "I could live here!" But also UK had a visa deal with
Turkey. So it was easier to get a visa. I already have clients here, so it was also
another advantage to choose here. And there's also little time difference between
Turkey and London and also it's quicker to fly in between.
00:05:11:03 - 00:05:29:22
Serdar Paktin
These are the four main points why I chose London, and that was my first time
moving here. So it was difficult because my background is in cultural studies that
have focus on American studies. So I already knew American culture, American
type of business, and American way of doing things. But the British way of doing
things and British business culture was a novelty to me.
00:05:30:00 - 00:05:39:11
Ellie
That's really interesting. So as a cultural insight specialist, what are the business
cultural differences then between the US and the UK?
00:05:39:22 - 00:06:02:12
Serdar Paktin
The polite indirectness in the culture is the major thing. I'm good at understanding
it, but implementing it, I'm still having difficulties. Americans are very direct and
Turks are quite direct as well. The UK is not as easy as the US to penetrate as an
outsider. Once you come in, it would need some time for the community to accept
you.
00:06:02:13 - 00:06:21:16
Serdar Paktin
My first years were trying to prove myself again to ex-clients, long standing
relationship. Well, when you're in the country, I think that relationship changes a bit
to them, until once again, we are able to get to that point. US is more open to
people who want to do things, and once you start creating it, they just let you in.
00:06:21:16 - 00:06:27:06
Serdar Paktin
As long as you're producing value. This is more of community that's letting you in
slowly in the UK.
00:06:27:09 - 00:06:28:16
Ellie
A bit more sceptical.
00:06:28:19 - 00:06:46:07
Serdar Paktin
I would say so, yeah, but that's also probably related to that long standing culture
of business. US in comparison to UK is just the last few hundred years and there's
this almost a thousand years of business tradition here and it's quite
understandable to have that checkpoint, so to speak.
00:06:46:19 - 00:07:02:23
Ellie
So how do you find your clients for Pakt? Is it a case of you going in, and trying to
source and trying to suss out who might have a need for your services or when
you have the need for cultural insights? Is it really clear and is it really apparent?
00:07:03:03 - 00:07:27:18
Serdar Paktin
My background is in strategy. So I have always been a strategist and then I moved
into a niche part of strategy, into cultural insights, into semiotics. And most of my
clients have come to me through existing clients and through referrals. And as I
said, I'm a strategist, so I'm not really good at new business. So I am not
really creating new business myself by reaching out to people and creating
connections -
00:07:27:18 - 00:07:30:20
Serdar Paktin
Most of my business still comes from referrals and networks.
00:07:30:24 - 00:07:32:12
Ellie
A brilliant way to get your new business.
00:07:32:18 - 00:07:57:13
Serdar Paktin
Yeah, it means that you're doing a good job, so that they're referring to other
people, which is great. I think you need to be able to get good at creating new
business through new relationships. Out of blue or reaching out to your potential
clients. And one of my methods is to build hypothesis on opportunity areas
because our skill set is to find opportunities within a cultural space and presenting
it to potential clients.
00:07:57:13 - 00:08:05:13
Serdar Paktin
But as long as they're not aware of that opportunity, that's not really resonating
with them. So it was a good experiment, but it's not the way forward, apparently!
00:08:05:13 - 00:08:13:21
Ellie
You were talking to yourself, I imagine. You were like: "There's this space where
you could do this!" And they're like: "What is that? I don't want to do that. We're not
doing that." So you're like, "Oh, I see."
00:08:13:21 - 00:08:19:04
Ellie
What have been your key challenges and learnings the past four years?
00:08:19:08 - 00:08:41:06
Serdar Paktin
It's a difficult question. There's so many things that's rushing to my mind
immediately. First thing, we have a saying: "A tailor cannot mend his own clothes
or a doctor cannot cure themselves." Even though we consult with our clients. You
need to listen to your target audience. You need to know who they are and shape
your value proposition and your benefits towards their understanding.
00:08:41:06 - 00:08:59:13
Serdar Paktin
When I first came in, I wasn't doing that really. I was doing what I believed would
be the meaningful thing and then just implementing it, not even testing it, not even
thinking through it. Just going straight ahead. Like any other entrepreneur - When
we talk to them,
we say: "That's not the way forward." And then doing it yourself is quite ironic.
00:08:59:17 - 00:09:13:14
Ellie
Agency founders do that all the time, though. You can do the do for your clients,
but actually when it comes to yourself or your self-promotion or web development
agencies that never work on their own website, because you don't fix yourself. It's
interesting, isn't it?
00:09:13:19 - 00:09:19:05
Serdar Paktin
That's interesting. We know how to do it and we don't really do it for ourselves, and
it's very ironic.
00:09:19:05 - 00:09:31:16
Serdar Paktin
Second thing I would say, most of the agencies in our space, like working with
cultural insights and semiotics, when I first moved in, I was doing this research and
I realised that we were all trying to sell the methodology.
00:09:31:16 - 00:09:50:07
Serdar Paktin
It is like a car company trying to sell VDU machine engineering. But a car company
sells mobility. We get you from point A to point B and people who buy the car does
not really care if it's machine engineering or AI technology: "Whatever you do, you
do it. Just give me the product and I'm here for the benefit that the product
provides me."
00:09:50:07 - 00:10:13:16
Serdar Paktin
And the agencies, we're more focussing on the methodology rather than the
outcome or the benefits that they are providing for their clients. So I try to focus on
that and I think I didn't really do it a good way because I was also focussing on
something missing the point rather than the benefits. After doing it for two years,
the pandemic gave you quite an extensive time to think about these kind of things
that are00:10:13:17 - 00:10:16:04
Ellie
Two years of some solid thinking time.
[LAUGHS]
00:10:16:16 - 00:10:40:01
Serdar Paktin
I realised: "I'm doing everything wrong!" And I'm still not doing everything right, but
I'm working on it to realise how to simplify things, turn it into a storytelling approach
and then make it very clear and simple for clients to understand what benefit
you're providing them. And as you can see, I'm still not really good at it.
00:10:40:12 - 00:10:50:21
Ellie
I think you're doing fine. Agency founders are going to be listening to this podcast.
In terms of cultural analysis, what would you say the key benefits are for them
doing a real deep dive?
00:10:51:11 - 00:11:16:13
Serdar Paktin
I can say two major things. One, to avoid any major mistakes that they wouldn't
realise in their branding strategy, product development, that's going to take them a
long time. Investing in a cultural analysis beforehand saves a lot of time and
money. For instance, this is from a very early project. We were working on a soup
product and the soup product was going to be liquid form and we were focussing
on the Turkish market again.
00:11:16:13 - 00:11:43:20
Serdar Paktin
And then at the end of the project we came up with soup means nutrition in Turkey
- could be a full meal by itself, but in a Western culture, soup is more liquid
because it's regarded as an appetiser mostly and then if they have the assumption
of a soup in a Western sense and they implemented a liquid form soup into a bottle
or a box and put it on the shelf and then it didn't work, it was going to be first: "Did
we do something wrong with the shelf choice that we made in there?"
00:11:43:20 - 00:11:57:05
Serdar Paktin
And then it was going to be the branding and the packaging. And then when you
come to the content itself as it's meaningful or not, what's going to be the last thing
that they want to think? When it becomes the first thing that you think it avoids all
that big layering of mistakes.
00:11:57:11 - 00:12:01:01
Ellie
Yeah! All of that old hoo-ha! You want your products to be the most impactful,
right?
00:12:01:10 - 00:12:26:10
Serdar Paktin
Focussing on the content and the semiotics and the cultural codes of your market
gives you all the clues. What your product should be, how it should speak, what it
should present as a benefit. As cultural codes define our preferences and beliefs
collectively. They speak about consumer psychology. But before psychology,
comes culture and our decisions and behaviours are automatically defined in our
culture.
00:12:26:10 - 00:12:41:06
Serdar Paktin
And if you understand the cultural codes, you know what moves people or what
people think is meaningful or not. And by that you avoid
doing a lot of mistakes in designing and implementing and executing and market
entry. But it saves a lot of time and money.
00:12:41:06 - 00:12:53:17
Serdar Paktin
Second thing - it could help them discover new opportunity areas: Developing new
products, new services for that cultural space, or pivoting their products to the
needs of those spaces.
00:12:53:17 - 00:13:24:06
Serdar Paktin
For instance, we had this talk with a major music streaming platform before they
were going to penetrate into Middle East, but the music listening habits and what
people expect from music and when they listen to music, why they listen to music
is different than the Western audience. So if you are going to enter the Middle
Eastern market, you need to pivot your product a bit to reflect the needs and the
culture of that thing, because music is a cultural product and you can't just
implement a global product into the whole world the way it is.
00:13:24:11 - 00:13:46:12
Serdar Paktin
And Facebook and Netflix understand this a lot, and they do a lot of research in
understanding different cultural spaces, and they implement that. So you can see
the success of Netflix originals in regional spaces because they do these
overarching cultures. They do one for the Turkish Netflix audience and sell it to the
whole region. Taking an Israeli or Lebanese Netflix original, selling to the whole
region.
00:13:46:12 - 00:13:59:08
Serdar Paktin
And then they go to global scale. It's like Casa de Papel or Squid Game. They are
supposed to be regional products, but they got something right in a global sense
and they exceeded beyond expectation.
00:13:59:08 - 00:14:19:07
Serdar Paktin
To summarise: By doing this cultural analysis, agencies and brands could avoid
doing major mistakes in different markets, in different cultural spaces, or discover
new opportunity areas in those cultural spaces to build new products and services
or pivoting their brands and positioning into those cultural spaces.
00:14:19:20 - 00:14:31:04
Ellie
That's brilliant. Is the majority of your work in other countries or like you said, is it
becoming more about the sub communities, like the way you speak to cyclists and
their interests or vegans like you said?
00:14:31:06 - 00:14:58:15
Serdar Paktin
I mean, I can see that there is work being done towards subcultures but they're not
still doing with a cultural emphasis on it. Still, the creative agencies do it in their
own way. I don't think they do it with a cultural emphasis on it, but also I don't know
the whole space. So it's my assumption, but it's still - more of a regional, local and
national cultures are the main essence of this kind of work, but I think it's already
moving to that space.
00:14:58:15 - 00:15:23:04
Serdar Paktin
But it is still done by not cultural experts - like mostly creators and other kinds of
researchers, I guess. So we should move the subcultures into the cultural domain
in terms of understanding their semiotics, understanding their cultural codes, with
cyclists, with vegan, with weekend campers - they all have a certain code of
conduct and cultural codes, and there's certain things that they aspire to.
00:15:23:04 - 00:15:29:16
Serdar Paktin
And I'm giving cyclists and vegans as an example because those are the most
obvious ones that we can relate to.
00:15:29:23 - 00:15:35:11
Ellie
Absolutely. So what is next for Pakt - what's coming up? What do you see
happening in the next couple of years?
00:15:36:02 - 00:15:57:12
Serdar Paktin
Great question. We had two years hold, so we want to continue where we left off in
2020 because it was like first two years in the UK. We just established and got into
a steady cash flow and growth and that stopped where it was. And there was
literally no work in 2020, because what we do is new opportunities, new spaces
and everybody retreated back to00:15:57:12 - 00:15:59:19
Ellie
No one was going anywhere!
00:16:00:01 - 00:16:10:17
Serdar Paktin
Exactly. Everybody was in their safe space and that's why we didn't have any
work. But now with the pandemic reasonably under control, apparently, and the
economy is going somewhere.
[LAUGHS]
00:16:11:23 - 00:16:14:16
Ellie
The economy is doing something, who knows?
00:16:16:13 - 00:16:17:10
Serdar Paktin
Definitely!
00:16:17:10 - 00:16:17:18
Ellie
[LAUGHS]
00:16:17:18 - 00:16:45:14
Serdar Paktin
Our next two years will be getting back on track and growing in the UK and
hopefully growing our team here and doing more cultural work on a broader
regional and cultural framework. We are still mostly doing the Islamic markets but
we want to extend beyond that and that's one of our main goals to get projects
going beyond regional cultures and also going into different subcultures.
00:16:45:14 - 00:17:04:16
Serdar Paktin
And not only discovering the culture but also imagining a future in those cultures.
How are things going to be meaningful towards the future? And discovering those
cultural spaces, that's going to be more meaningful in the following five to ten
years. More into connecting futures with cultural analysis and mashing up a
methodology out of that?
00:17:05:01 - 00:17:07:08
Ellie
What? Almost predicting trends that there may be?
00:17:07:24 - 00:17:22:07
Serdar Paktin
It's not really predicting trends, but it's more like a personalised meaningful area
discoveries towards the future. It's more than what's going to be meaningful, what's
going to be meaningful for you as a client or as an actor in that space.
00:17:22:19 - 00:17:33:02
Ellie
Exciting times coming up. Serdar, thank-you so much for being on the podcast. It's
been really eye opening in a part of agency life that I really haven't given much
thought to. So thank you so much for sharing that with us.
00:17:33:14 - 00:17:39:14
Serdar Paktin
Thank you for inviting me and all these great questions, because I wouldn't be able
to explain them otherwise without your questions.
00:17:39:17 - 00:17:40:09
Ellie
My pleasure.