What Is Advertising?
What is advertising? While this question may seem simple, it's actually one that can yield very different answers. In Turkey, when people hear the word "advertiser," they might picture a sign maker, or those out-of-touch guys on TV who hold court with their scarves and speak as if they know everything.
When you ask people who are genuinely involved in advertising, you get answers loaded with intellectual jargon and industry speak. So what's the real answer?
I'm not writing this piece to explain what is advertising to you in that all-knowing, industry-insider way. I want to share what it means to me and why it excites me, through the lens of one person and what they've accomplished.
Who Is Jose Miguel Sokoloff?
Jose Miguel Sokoloff. I had the chance to hear him speak years ago at the 25th Kristal Elma Festival. In his talk themed "Embrace Change and Make It Happen," he told us that advertising isn't just about selling something, sometimes it's about saving lives.
In the midst of a 52-year civil war in Colombia that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, Sokoloff stepped in alongside the government's military force. And he accomplished what weapons could not — with ideas.
During a period when an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 guerrillas were active, he convinced more than 17,000 of them to lay down their arms. For anyone asking what is advertising, this story alone is a sufficient answer.
It's hard to put into words what it means to hear a story like this, especially live when you're someone excitedly and eagerly listening with wide, starry eyes, full of enthusiasm about their career. Seeing just how powerful the results can be with the right ideas and the right support still excites me to this day.
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Operation Christmas: When the Forest Lights Up
You can find detailed case study videos and interviews across many platforms. But to summarize, I'd like to talk about three of Sokoloff's most important campaigns.
The first campaign is perhaps one of the best known: Operation Christmas. Motion sensors were placed near trees in areas heavily frequented by guerrillas, so that as guerrillas passed through the forest at night, Christmas lights would suddenly illuminate a tree.
And a message would appear: "If Christmas can come to the jungle, you can come home. Demobilize. At Christmas, everything is possible."
When you ask what is advertising, this sentence rises above all definitions.
Rivers of Light: Messages Carried by the River
Next came the Rivers of Light campaign. This time, glowing balls were released downstream along rivers flowing through guerrilla-held territories.
Inside them were handwritten messages from people whose fathers, brothers, siblings, or spouses had joined the guerrillas, notes expressing how much they were missed, how desperately they wanted them to come home, filled with shared memories. Not by force, not with shouting, simply with the human voice.
Operation Soccer: Peace Through a Football
The third is a campaign perfectly tailored for a football-mad nation, built around the sport itself: Operation Soccer. Thousands of footballs signed by famous players and well-known public figures were delivered to areas where guerrillas were active.
At its heart, it was a reminder of the game itself, of a normal life, of a match played with friends, of time spent with a clear head and a light heart. A small message, but a profound one.
All three campaigns do the same thing: instead of shouting at the target audience, they reach out and touch them. You might also want to explore our other content on creativity and culture.
Advertising Is the Art of Change
All of them are messages built on the right ideas, without coercion, without shouting, touching the "target audience" on a human level. Of course, the work doesn't end with laying down arms; job opportunities are created in various fields to help those who choose to return build new lives.
All of this doesn't end the war outright, but it lays the groundwork for a ceasefire that would be signed years after these campaigns. For those who want to learn more, here is a link about the Colombian peace process.
What Sokoloff said on stage that day still stays with me. Change is everywhere in life. Sometimes it comes by force, sometimes on its own, and sometimes it catches us completely off guard. It can be good. It can be hard. We see this playing out in real time, every single day.
But we feel the need to change the things that make us unhappy. As people working within advertising, we actually have the tools to do exactly that.
Real change takes patience. It takes discipline. It takes sustainability. It takes strategy. It doesn't happen through "right now," "the deadline was yesterday," "we have no budget but we trust your creativity."
Even the mere possibility of making that change with the right idea and the right opportunity is exciting. Call it social manipulation, call it marketing, but I think, drawing from what Sokoloff has done, what is advertising can be defined like this:
"Advertising is the art of changing human behavior."
