Calinos’ Head of International Sales shares the goals she sets for her new role moving forward, which include grow in key regions and a focus on co-productions.
After two decades with Calinos Entertainment, Asli Serim took the role of Head of International Sales, a spot left vacant after José Luis Gascue departure, in mid-December 2022.
“Jose Luis was a great member of Calinos team and I would like to thank him for all his efforts while he was with us”, she shared in an interview with ttvnews. “I wish him the very best on his new role in his career path.”
Serim has experienced various positions at the company. Started as the assistant for Acquisitions & Sales departments in 2004 and became Sales Manager and, later, International Sales Director.
“My new role definitely comes with the new responsibilities, but it‘s easy for me adapt since I’ve been in Calinos for nearly two decades,” said the executive.
What territories in particular would you like to see Calinos grow during 2023?
Like in the past, Latam is very important for us. We are targeting to grow and enwiden our presence in the region as we always did. In addition to this, Asia and Africa our the continents we will be focusing on 2023.
What powers the sustained success of Turkish dramas?
Turkish production has been able to travel to different continents and continues its popularity with an unstoppable velocity around the globe. The first and the important reason of this is the production quality. The shooting strategy, consisting of 80% exterior and 20% studio shootings, makes the content more real and believable. The second reason is the themes of the scripts. The dramaturgical structure is nearly identical to life itself, consisting of love stories, emotional family connections between parents and children or orphan challenges. Those elements are key factors to make the audience addicted to the Turkish content. The third reason is based on the gender of Latin American audience. In Latin America, the female audience loves to watch the Turkish male protagonists. They take initiative to make fan club pages and at each new launch of a content the fans get in charge to spread the news and make it viral, creating millions of followers on social media. This way Turkish talents become local Latin American stars.
What other trends do you see in Latin America?
The trend in Latam is co-productions. Our cooperation with the potential partners in the region continues. We are working on the remakes of the dramas and films in our catalogue as well as original contents. We already started working with the screenwriters for some of them. In one or two years you will see the fruits of this.
Adela is one of the most interesting titles in your catalogue. Do you expect more local remakes of Turkish series to become a trend internationally?
The new industry trend is to shoot Turkish stories with the Turkish production quality. So we are working in different countries for the co-production and/or distribution of the dramas in our catalogue.
