Design Education Talks Haluk Sicimoğlu: Blending Empathy with Advertising Expertise

We’re thrilled to welcome Haluk Sicimoğlu, a dynamic strategist, storyteller, and entrepreneur hailing from İzmir. As the founder of THAAT’S IT!, Haluk brings a sharp focus on innovation powered by insight, and crafts heartfelt brand narratives that truly connect with people 

You might know Haluk from his compelling TEDx talk in 2019 — “Kimsenin Sevmediği Kahve” (The Coffee That No One Likes) — where he masterfully used a simple cup of coffee to unpack how overlooked ideas can hold transformative value . His talk reminds us that even what’s initially unpalatable can, with empathy and smart storytelling, become something everyone loves.

Beyond the stage, Haluk is a go-to thought leader in marketing, innovation, and storytelling. He’s frequently featured by Speaker Agency presenting on themes such as “İçgörüsüz inovasyon uzun yaşamaz” (Innovation without insight cannot last), the art of business storytelling, and forging brand narratives that flow “heart to heart” 

So whether you're dreaming of launching a brand, navigating change, or just love a good story — stay tuned: we’re diving into Haluk’s unique vision and discovering how the most unexpected ideas can spark real connection. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/haluksicimoglu/?originalSubdomain=tr

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to Design Education Talks by the New Art School. Our guest today is Haluk Shimzimolu. Welcome, Haluk. Thank you, Leif Terris. Thank you for inviting me. It's great to have you here. Yeah, it's great to see you again. So tell us about you and your work. Well, since I was a child, I was really very much into understanding people, you know, telling them what to do about their lives. I've been, I've been doing that since I was a child with my friends and this feeling of empathy, I think finally took me to advertising and I've studied marketing in the United States, first in Akron, Ohio, where no one knows where it is and then this, and then in Miami. for two years and I didn't really like living in the States so much. So I came back and immediately after I came back, I have done the military service. And the last day of the military service, I was accepted to J Walter Thompson as a researcher and after working in the research department for a couple of years, then I was moved to being an account executive, which was the most painful years of my life. I felt like I was in Vietnam. People were actually torturing me. So I didn't know what to do. So I left the business for a couple of years. My father was in construction, so I worked in construction, which I hated actually. I enjoyed being outside, going to the sites and stuff, but that was all. And what are we gonna do? And I said to myself, let's go back to Miami. We went back to Miami and I'm sitting by the pool reading and the book I was reading was starting and owning your own, starting and managing your own business. And I remember definitely it was page 56, which said, if you are not ready, go back to corporate life for a couple of years and then start your own business. So it wasn't a couple of years. It was 25 years. I've stayed with BBDO for 25 years. And for 25 years, I actually absolutely did the same thing. I was the chief executive officer. And I've worked on so many different brands. Now I go out to the street, to the shopping mall, and I see this brand, that brand. And I don't think there is any brand in Turkey that I didn't really touch my hands, you know? So it was great working with people. It was great. BBDO was a great agency because their main thing was creativity rather than just making money because they were creative. They were making money. So. And their slogan was the work, the work, the work. So strategy was quite challenging. But as you know, corporate life has to end somewhere. So in 2015, I got the bug of the entrepreneurship finally. And actually before that, the BBDO has sent me to Barcelona to manage their university, they call it BBDO university, where teaching people from all around the world, they made me the head of strategy. So I spent. couple of years in Barcelona, organizing all the curriculum and teaching strategy. And when I came back, I thought, let's start this training thing. And so in 2015, I started my own company, let's say, both in training, corporate training. research, consultancy, and a little bit of advertising if the client really requested it. So that's what I'm doing now. I've been working on many different projects. Right now, what we are doing is that we are working exciting because we are now doing business outside Turkey in Iraq. It's a very interesting market. It's like a jungle. And we are doing four. projects there. We are working on four radio stations. We are working on a T brand, all doing the all positioning and brand building work. Actually, of course, we get into design because these are new brands. So you have to design the logo and the corporate identity and all that stuff. So that's what I'm doing. That's really exciting. That's really exciting. Thank you. So tell us about your journey in education. My journey in education is interesting. Well, I think it was the late 90s where Bbdo and I did a study called the future of men. And we found out that back then still, we found out that men felt imprisoned in this male box. And they had to act a certain way, do things a certain way, have certain roles. And we found out that they actually wanted to get out of that mailbox and wanted to be themselves. So I was presenting this in a university. And after I presented that in the university, one of the professors came to me and said, would you like to teach in the university? I said, yes, but I don't have a PhD degree. He said, it's not important. But what was more intriguing was that he wasn't in marketing. He was in HR. So I have spent a couple of years teaching HR, the brand, the role of brands in the HR department for a couple of years. And It was great learning actually because I had to study it myself. I didn't really know much about it and it was quite a new subject. And then I moved into another university which was called Bilgi. It was the first private university that had a great advertising department. And I taught their brand management and strategic planning for many years both. graduate and undergraduate summer school and all that stuff. I really, really enjoyed being with young people because they also make you feel young. You know, it's all that buzz in the university, sitting in a cafe, observing the students, and the students ask me, I befriended some of them. We went out together, it was a great time. And that really kept me updated, you know, about what the youth is thinking. A lot of people were doing research on youth and stuff, but being together with the students all the time, you really understand their world, socializing with them, going to their parties, staying up all night. Then we started working with them. I have actually hired them. We were working then night in my house. We didn't have an office. So my house became like a club, a youth club. My wife had two bedrooms for the students who wanted to stay that night. And it was really fun. Now I'm teaching undergraduate in Izmir. You know that we were there together in Izmir University of Economics and in Nişantş University in Istanbul, going back and forth to Izmir and teaching here. You know, I really enjoy it, but I think this curriculum is really bothering me because I don't think we are really giving the students what they really need to be armed with. That's my concern nowadays. They are not ready for business. When they graduate, they actually get a shock when they join agencies or the client side. And I actually feel a little bit crippled because I cannot influence that much. education system to tell you the truth. So, okay, that's very interesting. So what do you think is lacking? I actually think advertising is a people business. You know, if I was really managing the training for advertising, the first thing I would do is to ban the word consumer. Because It's an American word. It's coming from the early days after the Second World War. And there was mass communication and mass production. So people, we started calling people consumers, like the president of Mexico said a couple of weeks ago, said, in America, they call them consumers. In Mexico, we call them people. So I think it's a... Advertising is a person to person communication. You know, a brand is a person, a consumer is a people is a person, and these two people talk. That's what I say advertising comes down to. It's a dialogue between the people and the brand. So if you ask me what a brand is, I will tell you that the brand is a person. You know, it's got feelings, it has got an approach to life, it has got the life philosophy. It has got a character. It has got a life of its own. It's an organic living thing. And so that's why you need to do a lot of health checks and make that person really communicate with the people he or she wants to communicate. Some brands are male, some brands are female. So, you know, that's what I would do. I banned the word consumer. It doesn't exist. Okay. And what, and what else tell us about the change that you would make? This is very interesting. First of all, uh, what I think is lacking is the curriculum is still stuck in, uh, and, uh, in a very conservative, uh, world of, you know, teaching about, uh, brand pyramids and all that, uh, stuff. And, uh, you know, advertising strategy, which is all. was reverting 30, 40 years ago. But what I would do is that I would actually start with an art history. You know, people need to know, the students need to know how art has evolved during all these years. The history of cinema, philosophy, Western culture, Eastern culture. I think the first two years would be a mix of these things. trying to tell the students that advertising is science, but in essence, it is art. It is the art of the 21st century. So they really need to know, they really need to get an orientation of what art is, what an artist does. They need to look at the world from a film director's perspective. They really need to understand the feelings, because in advertising, what we are doing is that we are making people feel something, you know? telling them what to think, we are not telling them what to buy. Most advertising can do is show, make people feel something just like art, you know. So I read these briefs and these briefs say, what do you want the consumer to think after advertising? That is not possible. You cannot make the consumer think something. You can only make the consumer feel something and then he will feel this. And then, then he will do on his research, he will experience the brand and whether he wants, he wants to stay loyal or that, that's an afterthought. So, you know, we need to stress the importance of feelings in advertising. Most of the great work you see in Khan, you see in Rafi is the work that really understands people with a great insight and understand people better than they understand themselves. So the people say. Yes, yes, that is me. You know, these smart people, how did they know about how did they know this about me? That's what how advertising works and the students need to grasp that before they join agencies. It is more memorized and left brain at the moment. We have to switch it to be a more right brain. I also actually what would like to do is that some kind of oral test before them. before actually enrolling them in the advertising department of the university. Nowadays you have a general university entrance exam which is multiple choice and you say I'm going into advertising, you choose that and then you enroll. But what you don't know is that really that person has the fabric to be an advertising person. So I would do a lot of oral, say talk, talk to people, you know, before you enroll them. But with the certain, the system is not ready for that yet. But that's what I would do actually. I recently had another podcast where they asked me if you had a million dollars, what would you do? I would, I said I would start my own advertising school. And that's what we do. We do this in graduates when we are selecting our graduate students, but it's impossible to do that when you are choosing your undergraduate students. Yes, absolutely. I mean, it's a dynamics of private education. Maybe at the public school, at the free school, maybe more adjustments could be made for that. Yes, exactly. Exactly. It's a dichotomy. You know? Usually the good students are in those free schools, but they don't have very good teachers. That is actually a very good point because when I go to public schools in, you know, Turkey now, when I go to public schools in the depth of Anatolia, like Konya, or let's say Erzurum, and when I give a lecture there, I talk to the faculty. And I asked them what kind of students finally make it to the business world in a successful way. And do you have any examples of people who made really great careers out of advertising? What kind of students were they? And they said that they usually come from families that are not really that well off. And they have a purpose. And they have a point to make. It's almost like revenging their previous life. And they don't only satisfy themselves with what's taught in the school, but they read a lot, they go to cinema a lot, and they go to the art galleries and they have a certain outlook. They want it. It is like they are their own teacher. because they have the hunger in their belly for knowledge and for advancement. Exactly. That's it's very hard to get that. You know, in private education, exactly in Izmir, you know, I've talked to a couple of my students and I was really shocked. I said, so how is your daily life? And one of them said during the day, I go to school in the evening, I am a taxi driver. So he was a very good student with very little sleep. The other one had a shop downtown. He was actually the owner and the manager of the shop. But during the day, he came to advertising school and he was very successful, of course, later on. Brilliant. So how can we bring this more into the classroom, especially with all this AI coming our way? How can we make these adjustments in a more effective way? How can we do this? First of all, I think we need to update the teachers. You know, the teachers are all about memorized stuff. Every semester they teach the same thing. They don't teach, they don't change the content of their lectures. They don't really excite themselves. They are living in their comfort zones and they don't wanna be bothered. So first of all, I would be, if I was the management of the university or any kind of art or advertising school, I would be very careful employing the faculty. That's what I would do. Second is that I would bring a lot of people from the private sector to support the teaching, like giving courses. strategic planning for people like me or creative director who teaches creativity. Some some director who teaches production. Yeah, that kind of thing. You're really harmonizing the cooperation between the academic life and the business life. I think that would help a lot. I actually went to a conference about it. Don Schultz was there, I remember as well. This was in Izmir and we had, I think it's done every year actually in different places where they discuss the cooperation between academics and the business people. And it is still not very high, you know, academy is there, business is there. They're not really cooperating. And that actually leaves a lot of blank space in students' minds. Absolutely. And you know, the students also are, there's just all this talk about Generation Z, Millennials, Generation Y, Generation X. And I go to these conferences, they are talking about Generation Z and stuff. And at one point I want to stop the entire conference and say, stop this bullshit, you know. Just think of your own youth. You are 18 or 19. What did you want back then? What was your life back then? What was your aspirations? Gen Z, it is exactly the same thing Gen Z wants. It's not really different. You know, they want to be, they want to go into a company, in a career that they can learn something, they can experience interesting things. They wanna make with money. And the only difference is that maybe they are more easy going and too easily frustrated. And they have a quitting mindset. But other than that, when I was 19, I looked for certain things and now the youth is actually looking for the same things as well. So all this discussion about different generations, I think is a way of making money for some people because it's not that really complicated, you know. That's a very good point. That's a very good point. So tell us what else would you do in your ideal school? You said you'd create the school. So let's say, what else would you do there? What I would do there is actually, I would take them, I would show, it will be a lot about creating a living strategy. And that's what I would do. A living strategy is different from a strategy. A living strategy is always, combines two things. One, the general principles of advertising. Okay, that comes from the 1945s, 50s, 60s, and then combine that with how it is changing, the latest trends. So I would really ingrain into the curriculum about what the trends are. Actually, what I would like to summarize is, is that I would like to, when they graduate, when they finish school, I would like to change their mindset. Rather than looking at it as a marketing person or advertising person, I would like them to look at the world as an anthropologist, really understand the people's past, really understand people's culture. and then do something with these cultural insights. I also would like them to search for the truth in the brand, like a philosopher, because strategy is all about philosophy. You are trying to understand what philosophy made this brand. What was the first person who took this brand and made it big? What was his idea? What was his or her philosophy? And I'd like them to have a more orientation of abstract thinking, metaphorical. thinking. It's all very concrete now. It's all about thinking. It's all about the business results. That is true, but the business is all you can only achieve business results if you have an abstract emotional idea, you know, and then we can come to the concrete sides of things. Then I would like them to work like architects. which is they bring their idea as a concrete, strong idea. And then the engineering comes in. How would I do this? How would I build this? So it's very multi-layered thing. Then comes the storytelling. How would I tell the story of this brand? And you know, in advertising, in agencies, in the client side, we don't have much time to do all these things. So I would like them to learn to all this with the, I would say with the speed and maneuverability of agility of a fancer, you know, like the very quickly, you can do this in one day, two days, you can do this all by yourself. You don't need all these meetings, you don't need all these workshops. You just need to know how to think about these things. If you actually can have a curriculum that actually teaches people that, and I know that we can do it. It is funny, you know, we can, when I'm teaching in Izmir, when I'm teaching how to understand the target audience, I tell them that it's not consumer, it's person and every target person. is a five year old person is a naive five year old person looking for your help in life. Okay. So, so this is, there is this little kid, almost desperate little kid trying to make sense out of the world and the brands need to help them help him make sense of the world. We are mentors, you know, the brands are mentors. This thing about, you know, hero's journey and Joseph Campbell and stuff. There is this old thinking that the brand needs to be the hero. No, the consumer, the people needs to be the hero and brands need to be the mentors in the study. That's how Nike does it is beautiful. Actually, we to find your greatness campaign and still what they're doing a lot of things. The latest thing they did on the Super Bowl. It's all about mentoring. It's not about I have this product and isn't this great. It's my brand my brand. Where is my brand. Where is my brand. That's what the client keeps us asking. OK. Your brand is going to be there in people's hearts. If you just do this you know. That was excellent. That was really excellent. But do you know, this is great. You know, we can build this amazing student, but do you think the brands themselves are thinking like that? It's not just the big brands. Well, yeah, usually what happens is that we have these corporate, when they, when we teach them all this, And if they go to the client side, they will have a lot of difficulty. They won't be able to survive. Some, uh, at some point in the teaching, we need to tell them about the realities of the corporate, uh, worlds as well. The brands are very conservative. Big brands are very conservative. And actually the clients think that they know everything. They know everything better than the agencies in a way. You know, people revolt to this idea. That's not true, they say, but actually we have to give them the credit. They have done the client side have done much more in training themselves and updating themselves than the advertising agency. Absolutely. Advertising agencies don't even have an HR department, don't even have a training department training in advertising agencies is seen like a performance bonus. Okay, so you did great today. So I'm going to send you this year to Barcelona for a couple of days to get this Training and all happens in the training is socializing and networking and partying You know So we have to prepare them for that and we have to encourage them to Hey, take your time be slow, you know things will work out You know When you are making comments, when you are evaluating your work, think of what we have been discussing at school and make that point in a political way. Do not actually create havoc and be the Mr. Noel when you are actually just joined the company. The brands are very egocentric nowadays. I don't know where that comes from. They have a hard time losing their ego. And unfortunately, the good marketing communications come from those brands that they forget their ego. And all they think about is the people. Even you look at the slogans, they are trying to force the brand name into the slogan. We have done neuroscientific research. I got really mad at this. And I spent money from my own pocket and spent money from BBDO's pocket to really understand what a great slogan is. And the most great slogans do not include the brand name in there. It's about like a like a statement that shows them the way shows them what that brand is all about and approach to their life. You know, I remember that was a very good example. For example, Tefal, which says, you think of everything. It says Tefal, you think of everything. That means when they said you, it meant the consumer. It meant the people. It went both ways. And some new brand manager comes and says, I think people are tired of this. Let's change this. Consumers do not get tired of slogans or advertising work that easily. Good advertising is very durable. We get tired of these long before the consumer gets tired of it. No, this is really excellent. I mean, you have touched upon this. So, I mean, you've talked about a lot of things, but how, how can we actually better prepare students for, for employability as well? That is very interesting actually. I'm going to tell you one single thing, which is that they don't know how to write briefs when they graduate. So at least they should know how to write a brief and the training itself. Should be a lot of, lot more interact interact. You know, we need to encourage them to talk more, to engage more. Actually, what we are doing, I'm doing my doctorate now. Of course, doctorate curriculum is different from undergraduate, but I would still do this when I study in the United States. That's what they were doing. And I think we can bring it back is that you make students lecture themselves. You know, you give a subject. Yeah, this is this is the topic we are going to discuss next class. And how you. It is your responsibility to teach this in class. Prepare a presentation, come and see me a week before and let's discuss it. And if I need to add anything, I will add and I will do my part. That way. I think students are more prepared and more confident. Yes. It's the flip to call the flipped classroom. Absolutely. Flipped classroom. Yes, exactly. Flipped classroom. Yeah. Flipped classroom and. I would do all the theoretical stuff online. And when you do get together physically at the university, it's all about workshops and question and answers. That's what I would do. Yeah. Absolutely. How can our viewers and listeners find you? Actually, I can give you my email. They can email me directly, actually. And I have given you my Instagram and LinkedIn accounts. They can find me there. I'm quite active on social media. So, and I would like to, and I answer very quickly. So they can even call me if they like. And I can give you my phone. I would like to engage with your audience. as well. That's great. Is there anything else that we didn't talk about? Any last piece of advice you'd like to say? Well, I will say the last thing is about this definition of creativity. Everybody talks about creativity, but what is really creativity? It's like, I read a lot about what's creativity. It's like dancing with, it is like dancing with a jelly man, you know? It's not really concrete. But what I have learned about creativity is that it is make the strange familiar and make the familiar strange. Right now we are trying to make just to be interesting. We are making the strange stranger and we are making the familiar more familiar, which is actually hindering creativity. That's my final message would be actually. This has been absolutely brilliant conversation. Haluk, thank you ever so much. And for inviting me. Keep in touch with the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.