‘Women to Watch: Women Who Make a Difference’ ceremony was held at Swissotel The Bosphorus, Istanbul.
With a marketing career, the likes of which is hard to come by in Turkey, Şule Şamlı’s first advice to those just starting out is to work harder than everyone else and invest in yourself.
Şule Şamlı, Eti, Marketing Group President
It’s not a coincidence that Şule Şamlı is mentioned among marketing leaders in Women to Watch. After working for big domestic and international companies, she embarked on the Eti adventure in 2001 by forming the company’s marketing department.
All of the company’s communication activities, corporate social responsibility projects and new product launches are executed under Şule Şamlı’s supervision. In fact, the number of CEO changes at Eti, which could be considered frequent for a company its size, hasn’t disrupted Eti’s marketing communication.
Marketing was a dream of Şamlı’s since college, and she started her career at the end of 1989 in the marketing department of Eczacıbaşı Health Care Products. Later, when Eczacıbaşı and Procter & Gamble collaborated to form EPG, she became the brand manager for Ipana toothpaste. She then served as brand manager for Alo at Procter & Gamble and for Orkid at Sanipak.
After serving as the sales and marketing director for OTC drugs under Eczacıbaşı Health Care, Şamlı took on the role of marketing director at DanoneSa for two years. She joined the Eti family in 2001 and worked as the marketing director for the first five years, taking on the roles of Marketing Group President and Board Member in 2006.
According to Şamlı, there were two turning points in her career: The first was transferring to Procter & Gamble, thanks to the vision of then-General Manager Faruk Bayrakdar, while she was working at Eczacıbaşı. It was there that she truly learned about marketing. The second was her decision to work at Eti in 2001.
Şule Şamlı says the Eti decision specifically was the most critical of her career: “After working for multinational companies for years, deciding to work for a family company was a decision I was very scared to make. But today, I think this was the best career decision I’ve made,” Şamlı says, and lists everything she’s done at Eti as her favorite projects of her career.
For those who are just starting, Şule Şamlı has golden pieces of advice, taken from examples of her own life. According to Şamlı, one must never forget that the first years are the time to completely invest in oneself and to work extremely hard.
Another is to observe: Şamlı says one of the best ways to learn is to observe someone that you view as a role model. For her last piece of advice, she says: “You must express and defend what you know to be the truth in every circumstance. If this isn’t allowed, you must either try to change the environment or, if there is absolutely no way to change it, you must leave.”
“After working for multinational companies for years, deciding to work for a family company was a decision I was very scared to make. But today, I think this was the best career decision I’ve made.”
