The ad that united Pakistan
In the early '90s, Pakistani television operated under strict limitations: two channels, PTV and NTM, prime-time slots dictated by state-owned networks, and increasing restrictions on cigarette advertising. Yet, within these confines, some commercials managed to transcend their purpose, becoming cultural artifacts rather than mere marketing ploys.
One such anomaly was Rhythm of Unity, a 1993 television ad that defied both time and format. Produced by Spectrum Communications for Morven Gold, it was commissioned by Lakson Group and became the biggest-budget TVC of its time. It was a commercial that never showed the product it was selling. Instead, it staged a grand visual and musical performance at Lahore Fort: folk dancers from all four provinces moving in unison, vibrant red and yellow fabric billowing, a dramatic soundtrack pulsing underneath.
A lone horse, draped in matching colours, rears up against the sky. The camera sweeps across the weathered stone of the fort, capturing flickers of movement - feet stamping against the ground, arms lifting in synchrony, the nakkara drum reverberating through the air. The final image sees the dancers converging in perfect formation, embodying the commercial's tagline: The Rhythm of Unity. Lakson.
A cigarette ad without cigarettes. Branding without a brand name. And yet, three decades later, Rhythm of Unity remains one of the most iconic commercials in Pakistan's history. To understand its enduring legacy, The Express Tribune spoke with the minds behind its making.
A tough landscape
By 1993, cigarette commercials were on borrowed time. New regulations had pushed them to the fringes of television, confined to post 10PM slots, effectively shutting them out of prime-time viewership.
"One of our business objectives was to be on prime time," recalled Zohra Yusuf, CCO of Spectrum. "A strategic way of doing that was to stay away from any kind of product promotion and to create something that would resonate with the wider audience and uplift the company's corporate image."
The brief was both simple and audacious: create a commercial that could bypass restrictions without ever explicitly promoting smoking. Spectrum pulled it off by harnessing the most potent force in advertising - storytelling.
"In that particular moment, you had the opportunity to advertise cigarettes by showing Morven Gold's colours without having to show cigarettes or people smoking," said Shahnoor Ahmed, Chairman and CEO of Spectrum. By leaning into the brand's unmistakable red and yellow, the ad relied on a kind of visual muscle memory - instantly recognisable, yet never overt.
What emerged felt less like an advertisement and more like a national tribute. Rhythm of Unity brought together dancers from across Pakistan, their movements guided by a diverse and multi-layered composition. The final sequence - billowing fabric unfurling to reveal the Morven Gold logo - was as close as the commercial ever came to traditional branding. And yet, it cemented itself in public consciousness, an advertisement that sold an idea rather than a product.
Unlike anything else
Pulling off Rhythm of Unity was no small feat. The biggest budget film of its time, it brought together 200 performers and a 100-member production crew. UK-based Rimas Vainorious, who served as both director and director of photography, led the production. Asad ul Haq, who later founded the Karachi Film School, and Muhammad Khalid Ali, now the head of Crew Films, were both part of the team - two emerging talents who would go on to shape Pakistan's ad film industry.
"The challenge was to bring four different kinds of folk dancers and have them dance to one rhythm," Ahmed recalled. "A fair amount of time was spent doing recce and deciding the location, the dancers and all. Even the basic backdrop to it took a lot of time."
Naeem Tahir was enlisted as the choreographer, tasked with arranging dancers from all four provinces. Having settled on Lahore Fort as the commercial's backdrop, the team was treated to a heritage site in a dire state of neglect. Before filming could begin, the team had to undertake an extensive cleanup, reclaiming the site from layers of dust and disrepair. It was just one of many logistical hurdles stacked against an already ambitious creative vision.
Dawn became the production's golden hour. With each take meticulously planned, dancers, cinematographers, and choreographers synchronised their efforts before the first light hit the fort's weathered walls. Every detail, no matter how minute, was treated with care. In retrospect, it was this painstaking precision, this near-obsessive commitment to craft, that made Rhythm of Unity a phenomenal entry in Pakistan's advertising history. Even the nakkara drum that punctuated the ad's soaring soundtrack was a behemoth, custom-built to command both sight and sound.
The soundtrack, however, refused to fall in line. The first recording session in Lahore yielded a track that was discordant, stripped of the depth and cohesion it needed. "Unsurprisingly, the first recording was chaotic and not at all sonically pleasing," Ahmed admitted. But Spectrum had an adept composer in its arsenal - Keith Miller. It took Miller's deft hand to reshape it, layering it into the hypnotic, percussive composition that would come to define the ad.
And then there was the name. It was Yusuf who coined Rhythm of Unity, distilling the commercial's grand ambition into a phrase that expressed an ethos.
A lasting echo
When Rhythm of Unity first aired, it landed with the force of a cultural event. PTV and NTM ran it on repeat, audiences clamoured for VHS copies, and soon, it was everywhere - on television screens, in conversation, in the national imagination.
"The response was simply unbelievable," Ahmed recalled. "It was being talked about everywhere. It was airing several times a day."
It even reached the halls of power. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto personally requested a copy to present at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a moment that underscored how the commercial had transcended its origins. Over the years, it would continue to resurface, aired on Independence Day, revisited in marketing retrospectives, and shortlisted for international awards like Cresta and the London International Awards.
But its afterlife wasn't limited to television screens. The commercial seeped into public life. Folk dancers from the production were invited to perform at charity galas. Weddings borrowed its choreography. Its imagery - red and yellow fabric unfurling, bodies moving in sync - lodged itself into collective memory.
Three decades on, Rhythm of Unity endures. It resurfaces on social media, where nostalgia amplifies its legend, but its power is more than sentimental. It is a testament to what advertising can achieve when it aspires to something grander than selling a product - when it taps into something elemental.
"If you wanted to show what the country was in two to three minutes, you would put on Rhythm of Unity," Ahmed said of the broadcast's peak. Decades later, that claim still holds.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Express Tribune
17 hours ago
- Express Tribune
Bakhtawar Bhutto shares Eidul Azha family photos with sacrificial lambs
Listen to article Bakhtawar Bhutto-Zardari, the eldest daughter of Benazir Bhutto and President Asif Ali Zardari, marked Eidul Azha by sharing family photographs that quickly went viral on social media. Posting on Instagram, Bakhtawar shared a series of festive images alongside her husband, Mahmood Chaudhry, their three sons, and two sacrificial lambs, extending Eid greetings to her followers. In the photos, she is seen wearing a light brown outfit, while her husband and sons twinned in traditional white shalwar kameez paired with black waistcoats. The pictures also featured two prominently displayed lambs, indicating that the family performed Eidul Azha's traditional animal sacrifice. Bakhtawar married Mahmood Chaudhry, a Dubai-based businessman of Pakistani origin, on January 29, 2021. The couple now has three sons: Mir Hakim, Mir Sujawal, and the youngest, Mir Zulfiqar.
Express Tribune
2 days ago
- Express Tribune
Khalilur Rehman Qamar claims talk show clash on 'Taghoot' was staged
Listen to article Pakistani screenwriter and poet Khalilur-Rehman Qamar has made a startling claim regarding last year's viral 'Taghoot scandal,' stating that the controversial talk show confrontation was 'pre-planned' and not spontaneous. Speaking on a podcast this week, Qamar alleged that the televised clash between Islamic scholar Saahil Adeem and a female guest was orchestrated for dramatic effect. The episode, aired in June 2024, had sparked nationwide debate over gender roles, religious authority, and freedom of expression. Qamar claimed that the show's producers intentionally staged the conflict to provoke public outrage and media attention. 'It wasn't an accident. The narrative was scripted to reach a certain climax,' he said. According to Qamar, as soon as Saahil Adeem referred to women as ignorant, he was about to intervene to clarify that ignorance is not exclusive to women — he considers anyone who hasn't read the Holy Quran with translation, whether male or female, to be ignorant. However, before he could speak, a female participant interrupted, and the direction of the discussion took a sharp turn. Khalilur-Rehman Qamar also expressed his astonishment at the woman's demand for an apology from a scholar like Saahil Adeem. In his view, everyone makes mistakes, but what triggered his anger was the perceived disrespect. He stated that the entire incident clearly shows the producers' intention was to create provocation and extract a specific type of reaction — and that they succeeded in doing so. The programme, aired in June last year, featured Saahil Adeem making harsh remarks about women. He claimed that if 100 women were surveyed, he would find 95% to be ignorant, obsessed only with makeup and TikTok, and unaware of fundamental Islamic concepts such as 'Taghoot'. In response, a participant named Azbah Abdullah protested against his statements and demanded an apology. The situation quickly escalated into a heated exchange. Adeem questioned whether the young woman even knew the meaning of 'Taghoot'. When she admitted she didn't, he declared that this was precisely what ignorance was — and that she should accept it. The argument didn't stop there. The woman countered that the reason many women are deprived of knowledge is due to a patriarchal society, but Saahil Adeem disagreed, insisting that calling out ignorance is a religious obligation. During the heated discussion, Qamar also lost his composure. He expressed anger at the young woman, stating that if listening to Arabic verses was painful for her, it was unacceptable. He then asked the host to cut her microphone — a moment that intensified the controversy. The episode quickly went viral on social media. Now, nearly a year later, Qamar's revelation that the entire incident was 'scripted.'
Express Tribune
2 days ago
- Express Tribune
‘Deemak' review: Brilliant until the ghosts arrive
Without question, Deemak is the most divisive Pakistani release of the year. For those who still invoke 'support local cinema' regardless of a film's craft or coherence, this is perhaps the moment they've been waiting for. A harsher critique of director Rafay Rashdi's horror-family drama might be too easy — were it not for the sobering state of Pakistani cinema. When the only local competition is a film like Love Guru, hopes for a lively Eidul Azha at the movies are already dim. If audiences are weary of seeing Humayun Saeed and Mahira Khan replay the same formulas Hollywood created and Bollywood retired, Deemak is at least a departure. Rashdi deserves credit for venturing into a genre still novel in Pakistan's mainstream — psychological horror — and for roping in A-listers like Faysal Quraishi, Sonya Hussaiyn, and Samina Peerzada, who are compelling enough to carry a lesser film. Unfortunately, there's little novelty, or even the bare minimum, to distract an audience raised on Zee Horror Show or accustomed to the polish of big-budget US and UK. The result is a film that reminds you — every ten minutes, if not every second — how much better it could have been had it dared to be original. There are brief stretches when you can lose yourself in Samina's commanding performance or the slow unravelling of Faysal and Sonya's marriage. But just then, the ghosts arrive in all their ridiculous CGI glory. An ugly genre It's hard to tell whether the film assumes its audience is gullible and unfamiliar with horror, or simply so starved for content that it'll watch anything. Because there's no way the filmmakers genuinely believed their GTA-gameplay-style CGI ghosts would convince anyone. If the cross-border success of last year's Stree 2 is anything to go by, the lucrative appeal of comedy-horrors is undeniable. Stree 2 in particular — unlike the Bhool Bhulaiyaa franchise — leans heavily on preposterous CGI and still manages just fine. However, Deemak is anything but a comedy-horror. Cut the CGI ghosts, and you're left with a politically resonant, emotionally intelligent family saga — not groundbreaking, but grounded. The writing does well to reimagine a typical saas-bahu conflict as a multi-generational horror, haunted less by ghouls than by grief, control, and intergenerational rage. Most remarkably, Samina delivers the performance of her career as the embittered mother-in-law who knows only how to wound those around her. Sometimes she's domineering and ruthless, other times sickly and scheming, and by the second half, somehow all at once. Samina is also, single-handedly, Deemak's most effective off-screen source of fear. If Samina is gorgeously uninhibited, Sonya, as the begrudged daughter-in-law, cannot escape the demands of stardom. Most scenes find her composed and impeccably put together — not a hair out of place. It's no secret that the pressure to look attractive often clashes with acting freedom. But Sonya may be a star beyond her looks. When she lets go of the prim, proper façade — her gel-manicured nails forgotten — and comes undone over a plate of bland rice and curry, she becomes something else entirely. With rice and grime smeared across her face, she looks simultaneously deranged and ethereal. If horror is an ugly genre, Faysal gets the memo and enthusiastically complements Samina, his on-screen mother. Their dynamic as a possessive mother and protective son isn't surprising, especially if you recall the 2008 supernatural drama The Ghost, a Pakistani TV adaptation of Danielle Steel's novel. Set in an old, eerie Scottish castle, Faysal knows a thing or two about being haunted by the ghosts of the past when Samina is around. And boy, does it show. He's livid, raging, and spooked — not by what he sees, but by what he remembers. For those wary of mama's boys, watching Faysal's patience snap as yesterday's horrors bleed into the present adds the film's richest layer of emotional complexity. Missed opportunities It is these powerful performances that dash any hope of passing Deemak off as a comedy horror. Unfortunately, this leaves us with an emotionally rich palette that cannot reconcile its comical reliance on ghosts without revealing an underlying confusion. It's not just that Deemak fails to scare — after all, few films genuinely do. The bigger indictment is that it haunts you in ways it never intended. While the frequent appearances of CGI ghosts are hard to ignore, the film feels burdened by a rigid allegiance to what a horror film should be. Cue the infamous scenes of people levitating off their beds, and the exorcist who spells out the supernatural menace for the audience. If the resources to execute special effects and clichés are sparse, a film like Deemak could arguably dispense with them altogether. Its primary audience is, after all, well-versed in the visual vocabulary of the unseen. We cherish our saints, myths, and spirits — even when they have no face or flesh. With the right direction, it's clear that Deemak's real horror lies in grief, not the ghosts. Unfortunately, Deemak is unwilling to risk being misunderstood at any cost. But there's only so much you can explain within a reasonably paced two-hour runtime before it borders on boring and pedantic. By the time Deemak ends, the leading trio will have delivered solid performances, bolstered by capable child actors and memorable turns from Bushra Ansari, Javed Sheikh, and Saman Ansari — all anchored by a promising emotional core. Yet, at the end of the day, Deemak remains a ghost story haunted by its own potential. Have something to add to the story? Share it in the comments below.
