A significant cultural element in Istanbul is the iconic, melodic calls of street sellers. These sounds are instantly recognizable, deeply familiar, and felt as natural ‘audio ads’ that are part of the city’s everyday life and rhythm.

TBWA\Istanbul created this campaign for Akbank, marking the 34th year in an effort to break jazz out of its niche image. By merging Akbank’s jazz heritage with the universally familiar sounds of Istanbul’s street sellers, the campaign made jazz relatable and accessible. It leveraged a strong cultural nuance to show that jazz can be part of everyone’s world, directly addressing and overcoming the existing market perception of jazz as being only for a specific, niche audience. This approach allowed Akbank to connect its brand with a wider audience through a shared, beloved cultural soundscape.

The core creative idea was to transform jazz from a niche genre into a familiar, enjoyable sound for everyone in Turkey. Recognizing Istanbul’s iconic street sellers’ calls as deeply resonant, universally recognized ‘natural audio ads’, TBWA\Istanbul saw an opportunity to fuse the unfamiliar sound of jazz with these beloved, everyday urban melodies. They recorded authentic seller calls and collaborated with musicians to create original jazz tracks based on them.

The true creative leap was turning the sellers themselves into the media, broadcasting this new ‘Jazz Sellers’ sound through their own tools and routes, creating an unexpected, ambient brand experience that made jazz feel like an authentic, integrated part of the city’s cultural soundscape for the first time. This included recording calls from watermelon sellers, traditional Turkish drink Boza sellers, potato sellers, carpet tailors, garlic sellers, and milkmen, and blending these with jazz music played through street sellers’ cars and megaphones.

The campaign extended through various touch points, including a YouTube album, a surprise live jazz concert at a fruit market, embedding jazz into Metro announcements, and even the Akbank Call Center, creating diverse engagement opportunities with the audience.