The Ramazan Ads

Ramazan is one of the most important religious observances in Islam which is why, much like Christmas, advertisers have managed to milk every last drop of sentiment possible.

Turkish commercials are rarely risqué, usually showing young people goofing around or housewives accosted on the street about their detergent preferences, but the possibility the product might lead to sex is never entirely dismissed (why else would you need clean sheets?). Such is not the case with Ramazan ads, which instead follow a specific formula as far removed from sex as Santa Claus.

So… Christmas is about a fat man and his harem?

This formula is set in stone and must abide by at least two or more of the conventions listed below:

Family dinner

The most important part of the Ramazan fast is the part when you can eat again, and so all ads incorporate food, even if they are pitching flavored food-like substances.

Notice the most important part is not the food itself but how iftar dinners bring together families, coworkers and friends. The message here is, “People might come together for the feast, but they get along because of the product. Any other product leads to fighting and might give grandpa a heart attack.”

Bonus theme: If a table is being prepared at home, it is important to have the women do everything. This is part of a national policy to lower the standard for male domesticity to the point where Turkish women orgasm if they ever see a man setting a table.

Inter-generational love

Ramazan is a month of family togetherness, and the easiest way to relate that on film is by making young and old people interact. Ideally, a photogenic child should be doing something adorable enough to soften up a stern grandparent.

Having children and seniors enjoying each other’s company serves to reinforce the idea that your product is magic.

Mosques

You should put a mosque in the background (or at least a cardboard cutout), to remind viewers this is a Ramazan ad and not just someone accosting a housewife in her kitchen about her margarine preferences.

This ad is nearly thirty years old, proof that Ramazan advertising is a time-honored tradition that hasn’t changed since the ancient times or at least the 1970s.

Shared tradition

If one feasting family sells your product, then multiple families should sell even more. Spread these families out over various locations and you’re implying we are really all one big family united by shared belief and a commercial product.

Bonus theme: If your ad requires you to shoot in locations like Manhattan that don’t have picturesque mosques strewn around, you can substitute Middle Eastern melodies instead. In fact, most Ramazan commercials will feature gentle Middle Eastern music as an ad with techno or metal would most likely break your fast prematurely.

Being nice

Ramazan is about being nice: nice to family, nice to neighbors, nice to strangers. If your ad cannot attain a level of saccharine reserved for children’s educational programs and Hello Kitty products, it might be considered too edgy for Ramazan.

The baby spends the whole ad surprised over his father not honking, his brother helping the grandparents with groceries and just generally how nice everyone is. Towards the end he “wishes everyone behaved like they do this month,” which offers a tragic glimpse into the living hell he must witness during the other 11 months.

The more themes you combine, the more your product will sell. If you come up with an ad where adorable twin boys help an elderly man into a mosque amidst Middle-eastern music then ran home as their grandmother brought plates to the family dinner table, you could even sell sand in the desert and people would buy it.

And for those who might say that there is no room for commerce in religious affairs, they seem to forget Mohammed was a merchant long before he talked to God.