(Bloomberg) -- Shares in the sister company of Godiva Chocolatier Inc. plunged in Istanbul after an April Fools' Day-themed commercial went wrong.
The confectioner, Ulker Biskuvi AS, faced an immediate and intense backlash to its 50-second animated clip, as it fell foul of tensions that have riven the nation since July's failed coup attempt.
Protesters including a government lawmaker gathered outside President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Istanbul residence over the weekend to voice their objections to the animation, which showed a series of macabre April Fools' pranks, and whose voice-over signs off in a booming tone announcing “now is the day of reckoning.” The politician, Metin Kulunk, called the advertisement for snacks “an attempt to manipulate the psychology of 80 million people.”
"This nation has not and will not forget the night of the coup," Kulunk said in comments reported by CNN-Turk, evidently interpreting the video as a veiled attack. Addressing the controversy in a televised interview on Saturday, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said citizens' zeal in identifying coded signals everywhere was understandable, but unnecessary when the government is standing guard over the nation.
The blowback comes at a point of heightened tension in Turkey, where more than 850 companies have been seized since the July 15 attempted putsch. The country remains in a state of emergency since the event. In this febrile atmosphere Ulker has, like many Turkish companies, been the subject of political rumors, most recently in December when the company said speculation that it was seeking to move assets out of Turkey was “false and malicious.”
“Defamation Campaign”
In a public statement on April 1, Ulker called the response to its advertisement a “defamation campaign,” and said it would be taking legal action. The animation featured a series of April Fools' jokes waged between siblings, Turkey's premier retailer of chocolate bars said in the statement, and was intended in a spirit of fun.
The company's owner, Murat Ulker, tweeted “we are on the side of the nation” in response to the outrage, which he called “a conspiracy.”
The company's share price tumbled as much as 4.7 percent as of 4:42 p.m. local time on Monday. That erased all of the gains accrued on Friday after JPMorgan analysts upgraded their recommendation on Ulker to overweight, calling the stock's recent underperformance “undeserved” based on the company's growth trajectory.
“Ulker Biskuvi still has an outstanding growth story ahead. Yet, this is another incident that is souring sentiment for the stock,” Gulsen Ayaz, head of institutional sales and trading at Istanbul-based Deniz Invest, said by email.
Coup Memories
Other publicly traded companies owned by Ulker parent Yildiz Holding also dropped, with private equity firm Gozde Girisim Sermayesi slumping by as much as 7.5 percent, and grocery wholesaler Bizim Toptan as much as 4.6 percent.
In his April 1 interview, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim's verdict was that the advertisement was “inept.”
There is already “uneasiness in society, and this is a commercial that triggers that unease,” said Yildirim, who added that he hadn't personally watched it. "Apparently there were some remarks reminiscent of the days of the coup attempt, and some allusion to revenge.”
The government has said the July violence was orchestrated by a former ally of the government, the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, and has responded by purging more than 100,000 alleged followers of the preacher from their jobs in the military, judiciary and other state institutions.
To contact the reporters on this story: Tugce Ozsoy in Istanbul at tozsoy1@bloomberg.net, Ercan Ersoy in Istanbul at eersoy@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Celeste Perri at cperri@bloomberg.net, Isobel Finkel, Benjamin Harvey
Essential Business Intelligence, Sharp Market Insights, Practical Personal Finance Advice, Daily Fuel, Gold and Silver Prices and Latest Stories — On NDTV Profit.
