After 24 wonderful weeks on tour with Forum Shopping Centers, the GWR Live! Roadshow in Turkey has come to an end. Throughout the tour the Turkish people have shown their skill, determination and passion for record breaking with audiences in excess of 150,000 and a phenomenal 104 new world records set during the GWR Live! Roadshow.
Forum Shopping Centers, which are owned and managed by Multi Corporation, Europe's largest developer of shopping malls, partnered with Guinness World Records to bring the excitement of live record breaking to people across Turkey. The GWR Live! Roadshow visited Forum Malls in eight Turkish cities: Forum Istanbul; Forum Ankara Outlet; Forum Kapadokya; Forum Çamlýk, Denizli; Forum Aydin; Forum Bornova, Izmir; Forum Trabzon and Forum Mersin. At each new venue, the format of the roadshow and its challenges were adapted to reflect the unique attributes of the host city.
GWR Live! also worked with Forum's flagship retailers, such as Marks & Spencer and Ikea, to create live record breaking challenges which showcased their brands to the weekly audiences which flocked to watch the action. The dedicated challenges included timed trials such as the most cushions covered and the most meatballs eaten in a minute. A special Valentine's Day record, the most lip prints collected in 12 hours, was attempted in partnership with Max Factor. With the help of Senem Kuyucuoglu, currently Miss Turkey, Forum Istanbul successfully collected 2302 lip prints from visitors to the mall and set a new world record.
The people of Turkey embraced the record breaking challenge and week after week they set new world records. Whether it was the most t-shirts put on in one minute or the highest number of chair rotations achieved in 30 seconds, audiences showed they had what it takes to become Guinness World Records record breakers.
To launch GWR Live! Roadshow Turkey and to promote the opening of Forum Istanbul, Europe and Turkey's largest shopping center, we created a momentous occasion as two of our best known record holders Sultan Kosen and He Pingping the world's tallest and smallest men met for the first time. Their meeting generated interest from global media and created a platform to launch Forum Istanbul to audiences worldwide.
The GWR Live! Roadshow launched on 15th January and was stationed at Forum Istanbul for the next six weeks, providing live record breaking and entertainment every weekend for seven hours a day. These successful events helped Forum Istanbul to welcome 11.6million visitors since its launch.
From here each new location provided a new experience for the roadshow visitors. At Forum Trabzon a new record was set for the largest box of facial tissues which were presented to a special guest who could make good use of them, Mehmet Ozyurek, the record holder for the world's longest nose on a living person. In Mersin, a city renowned for its oranges, the roadshow paid homage with records set for the most oranges peeled and eaten in one minute and the most juice extracted from an orange in one minute.
Additional one-off records were set elsewhere, including Forum Ankara Outlet which unveiled the world's largest price tag and in Kapadokya, Guinness World Records confirmed a new record for the world's largest pot structure. Other Forum locations created unique records, such as Forum Çamlýk which created the world's largest bathrobe and Forum Aydýn which played host to 525 Efe folkdancers who set the record for the largest Zeybek dance.
The roadshow not only captured the attention of the Turkish people, but also the media with events gaining coverage across radio, TV, print and online. The launch in Forum Istanbul gained global coverage which spanned from Fox News in the U.S. to BBC News in the UK, and had a media value in excess of 30 mln.
The roadshow itself gained more than an hour and a half dedicated TV coverage, appearing on everything from the Beyaz Show, which is one of Turkey's most popular and highest rated TV talk shows, to the famous Turkish sit
