Murat ÜLKER

Open, transparent, neat corporate communication is an integral part of our business today. We take care to answer without being asked, and to provide accurate answers to unnecessary questions. We know that we arousing curiosity, but when sweetening your mouth, our aim is purely and simply your happiness. 

Corporate communication has now become a basic doctrine that everyone in business should know. I want to recommend you a book on this subject. I have written a preface to the Turkish edition and talked about what we have undergone.

Çisil Sohodol Bir and İdil Karademirlidağ Suher translated Professor Joep Cornelissen's book entitled Corporate Communication into Turkish. For this book, I wrote a preface entitled "The Secret of Successful Corporate Communication: Courage, Integrity, Transparency and Sincerity."

I remember, a couple of years ago, there was a pair of gazing eyes hidden behind a hand-drawn petit beurre biscuit in the top right corner of the first page of Hürriyet daily. "Who is behind this biscuit?" it was saying. This was because Ülker was on the list of the top 500 companies again. It was the first time that I felt the necessity of corporate communication. My beloved father, Sabri Ülker said, "Son, they don't deem us worthy of our business." If you think about my father's answer for a short little, you may realize that it reflects the whole soul of the business function called Corporate Communication.

Moving forward unobtrusively was possible for us only through structuring our business as small companies. Years passed, Sabri Ülker in 1994 appeared at the launch of Bizim Yağ for the first time and said, "We have opened the lid of the pot." Now, thanks to the self-confidence due to being transparent, we prefer not to give information to the ISO lists, since the accounting standards are not being complied.

We have a saying, "Spear pierces the sack". After the establishment of Yıldız Holding in the retail market with our rapid development in the FMCG sector in Turkey our products were placed on the shelves in around fifty categories. Particularly after the acquisition of Godiva, the spear pierced the sack.

Open, transparent, neat corporate communication is an integral part of our business today. We take care to answer without being asked, and to provide accurate answers to unnecessary questions. We know that we arousing curiosity, but when sweetening your mouth, our aim is purely and simply your happiness.

There are many case studies in Professor Joep Cornelissen's book entitled Corporate Communications that clarifies theoretical issues. It is both a detailed textbook and an enjoyable editing to be read with pleasure. Frankly, I am one of those who think that business administration and communication can be taught to young people through anecdotes. In fact, I think that these anecdotes will be more educatory if these events take place in environments where young people are educated and work. For this reason, let me try to explain how I perceive the concept corporate communication from my own perspective through three anecdotes.

The first anecdote is about the 28 February (post-modern coup process) in 1997. In that period, boycott lists were published in the media. According to some newspaper reports, Ülker was also one of the brands to be boycotted. The list was quite complicated, imagine there were even lahmacun sellers and street vendors. It was asserted that this list was prepared by the Turkish General Staff. But when it was evaluated a little bit, it was understood that it was prepared by some indefinite powers to form public opinion and was not an even list.

In fact, the perpetrator of the list was not disclosed. But some people were speculating on this list, as if they were taking some tasks upon themselves. However, we did not make any concessions from our stance in those days. In fact, the will that perpetrated 28 February that day asked us to place a full-page advertisement in a marginal newspaper stating that “we are stand behind 28 February”. I strongly opposed this thing because my tradesman customers did not support 28 February. When we explained the reasons and continued our stance behind our customers, this will believed in us and we managed to not publish that advertisement under almost military coup conditions that day. And we even sued a newspaper that published it. The court asked this to the General Staff. The General Staff declared that they did not approve such a list and the publisher was sentenced to compensation.

If we acted according to the zeitgeist that day and betrayed the grocers, we would not be able to remain as Ülker today. As a matter of fact, nobody respected that list on that day; that oppressive list backfired, our sales remarkably increased and our business and reputation grew. Mind yourself, don't stand behind the strong, be brave enough to stand with your customer.

The second anecdote is from 2016. I was in New York for a few days, my friends called, and they told me that the commercial movie with “April 1” joke concept of our “Happiness is Everywhere” campaign, which has been going on for three years, was being trolled on social media. In fact, there was no problem in the main line of our advertising campaign. Malicious manipulative montage were made to the visual and text parts of the animated film that was in the digital side and open to viewers, and state administrators were trolled through our brand. The moment we understood the plot, I made a statement over Twitter, the media of this plot, at midnight in Turkey on March 31: "I am abroad. I heard it now. Thanks to those who informed. Those who conspired will face with what they deserve. We are standing with our nation.”

A similar statement was made after me from the Ülker official account. We conducted an investigation before our Discipline and Ethics Board to urgently clarify the relations of our department employees with the subject. We also shared the results with the Prosecutor's Office. From the first moment, we worked in coordination with our state to reveal those responsible for the incident and provided all kinds of information to the relevant prosecutor investigating the matter.

First of all, we thought that we were the target in this incident. But when we took a closer look at this strange smear organization on social media, we saw that with the perception created, our government, as well as our brand and company, was wanted to be smeared.

I would not have believed if anyone else would tell me that there would be such an ugly, so mindless and inconsiderate movement in my country, but unfortunately I witnessed it personally.

We have also seen in our sales reports that these ugly smear campaigns of a small number of people in the virtual world, who claim to be close to a political view, but whose real aim is to disturb the peace and stability by causing indignation. In other words, the economic coup, which is one of the main goals of trolling, did not take place, came to nothing.

Although the number of people who started and managed this campaign was very small (about 200), the virtual fuss they made was perceived as bigger than it was. However, my message that I immediately intervened in the issue and told our nation that it was a conspiracy reached 12 million people, and with this message that sincerely enlightened the matter, our discreet people realized that this smear was wrong. With the common sense of the majority of our nation, neither our state nor our company was damaged.

A virtual fuss should be differentiated from the real public reaction. Otherwise, erroneous communication will make your company lose reputation.

The third anecdote is very recent... Our acquiring Godiva was one of the largest acquisitions of Turkish history and caused a national pride for our people. As far as I can remember, it was Eid al-Adha when the acquisition was announced and the joy of the feast increased incrementally. When we announced the establishment of Pladis, I felt that our people took justified pride of the establishment of such a global company from Turkey. But I also observed some doubts. Even some articles implying Ülker was about to move abroad were written. This is also quite normal, because Ülker is a secret hero, people adopted it so much that it was very normal for them to be upset as if one of their relatives was moving abroad.

Of course, neither Ülker nor we are going anywhere. United Biscuits, which we now own, acquired Keebler, the famous American biscuit brand, for $ 50 million in 1974. Then the British people complained a little saying "Our capital is going abroad." United Biscuits defended itself saying, “It is not important where a tree is watered, where it yields fruit, rather it is important where its roots are and who the owner is.” And in 1995, United Biscuits sold Keebler to a global investment firm for $500 million. Who was the winner? United Biscuits. That is, where the root of the tree is located.

Ours is the same case. If you remember, in an interview I gave to Hürriyet at that time, Vahap Munyar asked a question about this. "I won't go nowhere even I was dismissed," I replied. On the contrary, it would be more correct to say that we are bringing the world to our roots, to our country, in biscuits and chocolate. But of course, our duty was to leave no room for even the slightest question mark on this matter. Therefore, we thought it was necessary to clarify this issue for our stakeholders and we summarized important information in 6 articles for our stakeholders as follows:

1- Yıldız Holding, United Biscuits and Godiva are all 100% owned by the Ülker family. That is, the owner of all our companies located anywhere in the world and assets is the Ülker family residing in Turkey. So all this is actually a Turkish company.

2- While 100% of these companies belong to the Ülker family, the exception is the Ülker company. Ülker, founded in 1944, is open to the public on the Istanbul stock exchange and only 60% of the shares belong to the Ülker family.

3- In addition, Yıldız Holding, which owns the main brands such as Ülker, Godiva and McVities, is a Turkish company.

4- The production base of our global products to be launched will be Turkey. Turkey will be the chocolate base for Godiva, accessible premium chocolate production will be conducted in Turkey and sold to the geography outside Turkey. Products will be exported from Turkey to China, Japan and the United States. Turkey will be the heart of our entire global R&D.

5- In the acquisition of foreign companies, the credit resources of those companies and countries were used to the maximum extent. Therefore, an idea implying that the resources of Turkey are being used in the acquisitions is wrong.

6- Our largest capacity and employment is located in Turkey. Turkey holds all the priorities in all of our investment objectives.

Then, we shared all this information in appropriate channels where we could reach our stakeholders within a certain plan, and answered their questions. We did not hide anything, we explained everything as it is. There was nothing to hide anyway.

When we come to today, the majority perceives pladis as a global Turkish company of Yıldız Holding. A small group of trolls on social media whose roots are unclear is still trying to spread the same lie as the "virtual fuss" in a malicious form and are being laughed at.

From the three anecdotes and corresponding experiences, I came to the following conclusions: The culture of a country, its political environment, the point where the corporate communication practices of its companies reached, the ownership structure and diversity of its media, all change the practices and processes of corporate communication. But if a company conducts its communication with its stakeholders in a transparent and sincere manner, any culture-related offline and online virtual fuss about anything cannot prevent it. Eventually the winner will be the company in question.

This is like this both in Turkey anywhere in the world... Today I am mentioning this as the Chairman of Yıldız Holding which is making sales on a geography of 4 billion population, has reached an annual turnover of 54 billion TL, making an export of more than 626 billion dollars to more than 100 countries, owning 72 factories 48 of which are lcoated in Turkey, employing 65 thousand people and is in the global champions league of the chocolate and biscuit producers.

As a Turkish company, as Ülker family, when we look at our successes in the Turkish and global market, I think that we have received a recompense for the sincerity, transparency and honesty of our corporate communication. Millions of people who love, trust and defend us and stand with us with a great love are the best proof of this. In the last instance, what else can a company expect from corporate communication?

If you are right and if you deserve... Be brave, honest, transparent and sincere to your stakeholders, and do not hesitate to provide correct information according to time and place with the right corporate communication tools. You will see; your institution and your brand will be the winner.

Source: Murat Ülker’s LinkedIn post