MALTEPE, Turkiye, April 09, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Turkcell, Türkiye’s leading mobile operator and technology company, is entering the 5G era with an ambitious new campaign featuring basketball icon Shaquille O’Neal. Designed to reflect the company’s leadership vision and long-term infrastructure readiness, the campaign brings together ultra speed, capacity and coverage in a bold, cinematic brand story.
The campaign showcases the unwavering speed and capacity of Turkcell powered 5G
Built around a playful hair-transplant gag, the campaign opens with O’Neal being told to keep his role in the Turkcell commercial under wraps. So when reporters at the airport ask why he has come to Türkiye, he spots hair-transplant tourists around him and, on the spur of the moment, blurts out: “To get a hair transplant.” That improvised answer sets off a highly stylized and entertaining chain of events. Having said it out loud, he is left with no way back, a playful nod to the campaign’s central idea that once words are spoken, they have to be followed through.
Rather than feeling like a conventional brand collaboration, the campaign presents 5G through a creative narrative that blends humor, cultural texture and visual scale.
Released on 31 March, the campaign shows O’Neal in a series of unexpected and memorable settings, from dancing in a village with long black hair to braving the cold atop a mountain peak, using comedy and strong visuals to dramatize the speed and capacity that Turkcell 5G delivers in all conditions. Through a globally recognized figure and a distinctive story, Turkcell makes its message around coverage, performance and everyday 5G relevance more visible and engaging for a broad audience.
The campaign also turns a major technology launch into a more culturally relevant campaign. Rather than relying solely on technical messaging, Turkcell uses entertainment, storytelling and global recognition to bring its next-generation connectivity vision to life. In doing so, the company highlights the scale of its infrastructure and technology preparation it has built over the past decade as it prepares to lead Türkiye’s 5G transformation..
9 separate wigs were custom designed for Shaq
The scale of the production is as striking as the creative idea itself. Produced by Norr Film, the project involved a 35-day pre-production process, followed by three days of pre-lighting and rehearsals with three camera crews, and a further three days of filming with Shaquille O’Neal. The shoot involved a crew of 180 people and nearly 60 vehicles.
One of the campaign’s most distinctive creative elements was the character design built around the hair joke. Nine custom wigs were produced for O’Neal, four of them made in the US, in a process that took 12 days. Four separate costumes were also tailored for him in the US. The post-production phase, which ran for nearly 70 days, brought together four production companies working simultaneously in an integrated workflow to deliver the campaign’s high visual finish.
With this campaign, Turkcell signals that its move into the 5G era is not only backed by strong technology and network readiness, but also by the confidence, creative ambition and storytelling scale expected of a market leader.
