Today started out a little rough. My roommate Matt and I woke up late and almost missed our bus. I know that’s not a good way to start a day but as the day progressed it turned out to be a great one. I wanted to add that the traffic here isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We surprisingly got to our first destination in a timely manner. We went to Cilek Mobilya which is a Turkish children’s furniture.

When I first heard that we were going to a furniture company I was a little skeptical. I did not realize how interesting and fun this company would be. When we arrived the president Muzaffer Cilek gave us a tour of the facility. Cilek has been around for 20 years and their unique designs has been the driver for their sales. They have over 444 sales points in 66 countries. Speaking with the president, the director of marketing and the director of human resources has given me an insight on the company’s culture, brand and day to day operations.

The second part of our journey brought us to Fox Turkey. This was a interesting venture as well. In America majority of people views Fox, at least Fox news as being very bias and manipulative but that wasn’t the case in Turkey. We received a tour from the news operations manager Onur Kumbaracibasi who explained the process of how shows are produced, the length of those shows and the advertisements that goes along with those shows. It was interesting to find out that the Turkish government has regulations that restricts the network from advertising alcohol, any type of newspapers, a multitude of brands and other things to say the least.

Turkish Fox now has 10 different channels with majority of their soap operas lasting up to 3 hours a episode. The reason they do this is because Turkish law only allows 12 mins of advertisement per hour. So to get the amount of advertisement that they need they have shows that last up to 3 hours. This day has been a learning experience and we will see what tomorrow will bring.