Global Agency’s Izzet Pinto Discusses Expansion Strategy

NEW YORK: Izzet Pinto, the founder and CEO of Global Agency, talks to World Screen about his passion for cutting-edge, buzz-generating content, and how this has contributed to the company’s overall success.

WS: What has been the strategy behind the company’s aggressive expansion?
PINTO: It is mainly because I am addicted to growth. I am never satisfied with the position we reach and always have bigger goals. Each time we attend major markets like DISCOP West Asia, MIPCOM or MIPTV, I get ambitious and set bigger goals for every year. These goals include hiring more people, having bigger space at the markets, spending more on marketing and achieving greater sales. As you know, the sky is the limit, so we keep aiming to be one of the most important distributors in the market.

When I founded the company, we had only one format. After a while, we had five formats. The format business was growing but I wanted to have a new division, so I opened a film section to export Turkish movies abroad. It went pretty well, and later on we opened a series-distribution division. The success was bigger than I had expected.

Recently, we decided to move into factual entertainment. We acquired the well-established brand World Wide Entertainment from Australia. In the coming years, we may go into kids’ programming. Also, digital rights are growing these days, so we will be focusing on digital platforms. We prefer to grow carefully, so we would like to step into new genres every two years.

WS: Have partnerships also been essential to the company’s expansion?
PINTO: We have partnered with Coyote from France, Miditech from India, Zucchero Media from Romania, Costantin from Germany and SBT from Brazil. We became the exclusive distributor of their formats. These deals with well-known international companies help us not only to grow in numbers but to also have a better reputation in the market. We have always wanted to be a global company, so these partnerships make us a global distributor rather than a local one. At the moment we represent projects from 15 countries. We are hoping to raise this number to 25 before the end of the year.

WS: Global Agency was one of the first companies to begin exporting Turkish drama series; what value did you see in these programs initially?
PINTO: To be frank, I didn’t step into this business with big expectations at first. I believed in the projects, but it took us a long time to convince the buyers. I made the first sale with a Bulgarian broadcaster. With the success in Bulgaria, I was able to convince a buyer in Serbia, then Greece, and then it had a domino effect. At the moment, Turkish series are being exported to more than 50 countries. Turkish series are shot with big budgets. The stories are appealing and include great talent; they have all the ingredients for a successful project, therefore viewers love them.

WS: Have you been able to sell the formats of any of these Turkish dramas as well?
PINTO: Selling the script rights has always been a challenge. For entertainment programs, buyers prefer to buy formats, but for producing series, they prefer to work with local scriptwriters. One of our strongest scripted formats is Forbidden Love, which achieved more than a 70-percent share with its finale. Telemundo licensed the format and started airing it in January. We are very excited with this project since the script is based on a 100-year-old Turkish novel. I am sure more deals will follow after its success in the U.S.A.

WS: What types of formats seem to be working best in the market nowadays?
PINTO: From our catalogue, shopping and cooking formats are doing very well lately. Shopping Monsters has been optioned and licensed in over 25 countries. Blind Taste achieved similar success in less than a year. Still, our wedding format Perfect Bride has the best track record of success, with deals done in more than 35 territories.

Reality shows are more likely to create buzz. In Perfect Bride, the mother-in-law is choosing the bride for her son. This concept created huge buzz in each territory we entered. Since the concept is quite old-fashioned, everybody was talking about this format. In Turkey, the grand finale achieved more than a 70-percent share. Formats with controversy can still be successful.