Roberto Carlos Stars In The Garanti Bank Commercial

Roberto Carlos Stars In The Garanti Bank Commercial
By Ozgur R. Nazilli

Ask anyone out there today. Fenerbahce fan or not, every unbiased individual would respond "Roberto Carlos" to the question "Who is the biggest star in the Turkish League right now?". With so many titles and achievements under his belt, one would think that Roberto Carlos would be a self-centered, pompous person. However, for the past two months, Carlos has proven to everyone that he is far from seeing himself above everyone else. Just take a look at Antu.com, the Fenerbahce fans forum, and you would see 4 or 5 threads on every page of the forum which praise Roberto Carlos for being so down to earth, even though he is inarguably still the best player in his position in the world. People who were making fun of him by calling him "Grandfather Carlos" before the start of the season must have changed their names and their address after they saw his magnificent run past two Ankaragucu defenders in the last week's game.

There is just too much to praise about Carlos, so I am moving on to the focus of the article before I get carried away. The board of the Garanti Bank, a rising star in the Turkish Banking industry, have shown how smart and how knowledgeable in marketing they are by contracting Carlos to star in one of their commercials. The commercial is the "hot" topic in Turkey right now, so I decided to share it with the readers of Fenerbahce Worldwide.

In the commercial, Carlos works for a company as one of the employees who do the daily work for the people who are higher up on the hierarchy than they are. Carlos' boss, having too much work to do and not nearly enough time to do it in, decides to send Carlos to Garanti Bank, to take care of something. He hands Roberto Carlos what he should do, and tells him to go there and get back quick. Carlos says "Hemen Ağabey" (Literally: "Right away brother" (brother is a colloquial term in Turkish which is used for a variety of purposes but mainly used to show an informal sign of respect) in Turkish and starts his run. Watch the rest for yourself:



At the end of the commercial, Carlos comes back tired and sweaty from the run (although this part is very untrue. In the commercial, Carlos runs for 40 minutes and is panting. In a football match, he runs non-stop for 90 minutes and isn't half as tired!) and says "Tamamdır Ağabey" ("Taken care of, brother"). The boss thanks him and asks if he could go out and get a couple of bagels now, hence the dirty look Carlos gives him at the end of the commercial. The captions in the commercial say "It takes 40 minutes for the fastest left back in the world to do something from a branch. You can do the same thing in a minute via the internet banking."

This is by far my favorite commercial in which a football player stars. What do you think?