Ghost Town: “Surfacing a Submerged Truth”

“If fishing dies, Ocaklar dies,” warned the campaign from supermarket chain CarrefourSA earlier this month.

The ‘Ghost Town’ project, created by TBWA\Istanbul, all began about a year and a half ago, when the team received a one-page brief from the retailer. “The fishing economy, which was the livelihood of Ocaklar Town (a coastal town in Turkey), was under threat due to the ghost net problem, and CarrefourSA was taking steps to reverse the situation,” TBWA\Istanbul tells me.

But what are ghost nets? They are abandoned, lost, or discarded (ALD) fishing nets, that drift ominously beneath the ocean’s surface, ensnaring marine life and wreaking absolute havoc on delicate ecosystems.

After receiving the brief, the team wrote a simple yet powerful starting point before developing the main idea. That was: When fishing disappears, Ocaklar Town will turn into a ghost town.

“The idea immediately took shape from this concept – an installation of a ghost town created from these fishing nets, retrieved from the sea,” the team tells me. “However, we all realised from the very first moment that the real challenge would begin after coming up with the idea. Thus began a gruelling process that would last a year and a half,” they explain.

Once they received approval from the brand, they sent their first team to the town. The local community was already aware of CarrefourSA’s sustainability efforts in the region. It was important for the team to feature the local people and their real stories in their project films, ensuring they accurately reflected the scope of the problem.

“Veteran fishers and local residents were the core elements of the campaign,” says the team. While the main concept could have been about simply creating the ghost town installation from the nets, they knew it was essential to enhance the stark visual with the pull of human stories in order to create an authentic narrative. “Without the local community and fishers, we could not have achieved this.”

The team explains that their biggest concern was the unpredictability of what the local community may think of a project like this. “After all, even if you are doing something beneficial for the region, covering a living town with thousands of square kilometres of fishing nets could lead to unforeseen responses. However, our fears did not come true. On the contrary, the local people embraced the project,” they explain. “You should have seen the excitement on the faces of those who witnessed the installation.

“By turning ghost nets retrieved from the sea into an installation, we are surfacing a submerged truth,” the team tells me. “Creating a ghost town out of ghost nets reveals the very danger that awaits us now and in the future.”

Their goal was to communicate that the ghost nets that have been destroying marine life for years will eventually begin to devastate the towns that rely on those waters once the fish are gone.

The team set out to transform the material that poses a threat to marine life into a tool for raising awareness. “From the very first day of its launch, our project began to spread organically,” I’m told. “The main goal of our project was to draw attention to this issue. The fact that millions of people have seen our project has helped us achieve our primary objective.” Galvanised by the project, the team has confidence that policymakers will enact decisive measures to safeguard the Marmara Sea, ensuring the preservation of Ocaklar’s fishing heritage for generations to come.

When asked about the future of advertising campaigns addressing environmental issues, the team at TBWA\Istanbul says they are encouraged to see such projects. However, “the industry has been stuck addressing the same problems for years.” They add, “Unfortunately, our plane faces thousands of different challenges. Instead of continuously focusing on the same issues, brands and advertisers should diversify their focus to use their influence more effectively.”

“In our opinion, this project serves as a reminder to the industry of that necessity. More effort should be directed toward exploring untapped topics.”