Marketing in Pakistan has become the new trend for different brands. Popular brands like Olpers, Nestle, Aquafina, Coke, Pepsi invest a lot in their marketing strategies; Mostly advertisements.

It has been seen in the recent years that different brands are endorsing their products through the means of showing the most ‘Popular celebrities of the time‘ in their advertisement. One of the most hyped advertisements was seen during the days of Humsafar when Mahira Khan and Fawad Khan appeared together in the Aquafina advertisement. It was a very good strategy of Aquafina to promote their product by showing the most popular faces of that time, Ashar and Khirad. Aquafina’s sale had boost immensely after the advert was played regularly on different channels. There was also a re telecast of the TUC advertisement again featuring Mahira and Fawad during the Humsafar ads. We also saw the NesVita Ad featuring Mahira Khan playing regularly in the breaks of both Humsafar and Shehr e Zaat.

Again we can see the popular celebrities in Ads nowadays usually during the ads of their own show on air. Recently, we saw the Q mobile Noir Advertisement featuring Fawad Khan after his new show Zindagi Gulzar Hai was launched. Another advertisement featuring Fawad Khan which is played regularly nowadays is the Service shoes advertisement. Another popular face nowadays in Ads is of Maya Ali (Meesha of Aik Nayee Cinderella) she is seen in a totally different look in the sprite Advertisement. Ayesha Omer and Azfar Rehman, both are seen together in the Kurkure Advertisement. Ayesha Omer and Hina Dilpazeer feature in the Harpic advertisement, as Momo and Khubsurat; the popular characters of Bulbulay. The Candi biscuit advertisement features Adeel Hussain, Annie Jafferi (Last seen in Meri Behen Maya) and Hamza Ali Abbasi (who played the negative role in Mere Dard Ko Jo Zuban Mile). Fiza Ali, who is currently seen in the drama Ghaao, also features in the latest PTCL Smart TV advertisement.

Other Brands like Dairy milk, Nestle, Tarang, Ufone, Warid, Zong, Telenor, Mobilink also invest a lot in their advertisements. Ufone Ads show lighthearted comedy and are usually very creative. It features the same celebrities mostly; namely Mikaal Zulfiqar, Faisal Qureshi (who is the main person behind the creativity and I must say he makes great advertisements), Mehreen Rahael(she is no longer seen though), the model Ayyan Ali and Adeel Hashmi. Tarang Advertisement has featured a lot of celebrities like Ahsan Khan, Fawad Khan, Sonya Jehan, Resham, Moammar Rana, Meera, Reema, and Danish Taimoor. The other mobile network brands like Mobilink, Warid, Zong have featured celebrities like Ali Zafar, Fahad Mustafa and Atif Aslam. The Mobilink song Jazba which was previously sung by Atif Aslam has now been adapted and sung by the contestants of Surkshetra. The winner Nabeel Shaukat Ali and the other two popular contestants, Imran Ali and Mulazim Hussain have done a great job and the song has come out pretty well. Ali Zafar was also seen in a Mobilink advertisement featuring him and Nargis Fakhri which had become very popular.

Brand like Coke and Olpers have provided huge amounts of sponsorships to shows like Tanhaiyan Naye Silsilay and Coke Kahani. The show has special scenes just to promote the brand. This is the beginning of a new trend. We would see other brands following their lead and providing sponsorships to drama serials.

Brands are constantly competing against each other and need to come up with more creative advertisements all the time. The main ingredient, however is to feature a popular celebrity and their fans automatically gets persuaded to use the brand’s product. The investment may be huge as celebrities demand high prices but the profit gained due to the increased sales is more than satisfactory for the brands.

Mariam Shafiq.

Ever thought of noticing how similar few of our celebrities are? You must have heard that people often find Fawad Afzal Khan resembling Mr. Bean but you would be amazed to find that I recently found few similarities in between Fawad Khan and Humayun Saeed too. Now this can be really dangerous for me as some of you might totally disagree with the idea, which is quite genuine too; After all both the celebrities are unique in their own way and have different features from eyes to lips.

Up to my knowledge, people haven’t found them resembling in anyway up till now but I have compiled few proofs related to this.   Here they go!

While I was searching for the images, I came across the fact that there are actually Many of them. Try doing it yourself, Its interesting :).

Waiting for your feedback about it, feel free to criticize or disagree with the thought.

Best Wishes,

Nida Zaidi

If your eyesight is weak and you wear glasses then there are huge chances that you might have found yourself interested in getting a wayfarer for yourself after watching Fawad Khan as Asher in Humsafar.  It is interesting to find that though it is about a year that Humsafar came to an end but even now the remains of this super hit drama are been cherished as a fashion symbol when it comes to choosing a frame for yourself.

You might have noticed that wearing wayfarer is becoming a fashion symbol where the youth specially is enjoying the ‘Asher-look’ to its fullest. What is more interesting is the fact that even the celebrities are carrying the trend since the last  year.

Here is asmall list of Celebrities who have given a boost to this trend, have a look!

Faysal Qureshi is enormously talented, very versatile and is one of those stars who never fail to impress the viewers with their acting. He has literally owned every character that he has chosen to do till now. Faysal has excelled not only as an actor in serious and comedy roles but is also one of the best morning show hosts who entertains his viewers with intelligent topics and he feels very passionately about his work. There are other people in the industry who share the name with him but Faysal Qureshi did not resort to a name change in order to stand out and to be known but he lets his work make him stand out in a crowd. He constantly keeps on experimenting with his looks and is one of those actors in the industry who seem to be getting younger with time.

Faysal Qureshi started his career as a child artist and has also performed in many films too. But for now it seems like his focus is on television and he does not intend to work in films until it is a project that has something substantial to offer. Faysal Qureshi truly got noticed when he was cast as the lead in Boota From Toba Tek Singh that aired on PTV. There was no looking back for this gifted artist after that, the offers came pouring in and very soon he had a massive fan following. It is no surprise that Faysal Qureshi was nominated four times for the best actor category in the Lux Style Awards for his plays Deewar, Umrao Jaan Ada, Harjaee and Jaey Kahaan Yeh Dil and won the Lux Style Awards for best actor and host more than five times.

Unlike many of his co stars Faysal Qureshi has not ventured into direction or production yet because according to him, “The thought of becoming a producer or director has never really appealed to me. I still feel I have far to go as far as acting is concerned”. Faysal Qureshi is not only a great actor but also a very down-to-earth person who has worked very hard to achieve all the success that he enjoys today. Faysal Qureshi has a grown up daughter and when asked in an interview if he would allow his daughter to work in the industry he said that he had absolutely no peeves about it and it was solely her decision. Faysal is not completely averse to the idea of working across the border but only if the nature and caliber of the role he is offered is as good as the ones he is doing at the moment and also it does not demean his own country in any way.

Faysal Qureshi has lately raised his voice very strongly against the foreign dramas being aired on Pakistani channels but also believes that the Pakistani people will eventually turn to their own dramas. Faysal Qureshi also stated in one of his interviews that the Pakistani actors are as capable as their Indian counterparts but they do not get the same amount of exposure and that is something he wants to see improving. He would like that the Pakistani actors also get more exposure and only then they can prove their mettle all around the globe. He also believes that the Pakistani drama industry should come up with new ideas in order to stay ahead of the competition and not become a part of the rat race. One of the reasons Faysal Qureshi is so selective about what he does is that he thinks that he owes it to his fans because his fans trust him with making good choices.

We wish Faysal Qureshi all the best for his future and expect nothing but quality work from him. He is an asset for our industry and will continue to be so.

Ayesha Ahmed.

Local channels have opened new doors of entertainment for the viewers who have had been limited to the national channels if you look 15 years back. These days when we get tired of changing channels but the list doesn’t comes to an end, It must be admitted that Pakistani Media has also been flourished  in the last decade. Having more opportunities to show their talents, artists find themselves in a safer position, having a good list of options to choose as their next project. However, as a viewer, if you sit and analyze about where our drama industry is heading towards, you will notice that almost every next project is a replica of a previous hit.

By saying so, I do not mean in any way that the industry is not producing or rather introducing new storylines, in fact, a variety of dramas that have just launched or are about to, are capable of attracting huge audience on the basis of their uniqueness.

By the end of 2012, we saw an alarming situation within the drama industry where the producers, celebrities and artists found the airing of foreign content a clear violation of their rights. News channels supported the local celebrities dedicating their program slots to the topic. We also saw artists protesting at Karachi press club demanding their rights as an actor. It was strange to find the TV channels that aired these dramas stayed neutral and avoid coming into the limelight by not talking about the issue. Geo TV still hasn’t passed any comments as a retaliation to the fingers been raised on it. However, it is Urdu 1s’ official who have finally given his words on the matter.

It is always a pleasure to know what our celebrities have got to share with their followers. However, due to the busy schedules they hardly get enough of time to interact with their followers especially on E-Media. It was lately found that Hina Khuwaja Bayat, a flawless actress of all time finally took out her precious time to write down her feelings about the Pakistani Drama Industry. Hina has always entertained the Pakistani Drama lovers through every role she picks. If you have a recap of all the successful dramas these days, you will find one similarity in them and that is the presence of Hina in them.

Here is what Hina had written for her followers, Have a look!

Let me start by confessing that I do not read novels but even a non reader like me knows the gist of the story of a play that is based on a novel or even one that is based on stories that get published in Urdu digests thanks to all the online discussions as well as those which I have with friends and family. I can’t help but go through all the drama discussions on daily basis even though I may not be an active part of them. There have been dramas that got me really excited, I remember when Shehr-e-Zaat was about to go on air I was really looking forward to it because the promos looked very intriguing and it was also going to be Mahira Khan’s first play after Hamsafar. But gradually by reading the discussions under the promo videos in particular and the ones I had with a few family members who read novels, I could easily make out what the story was going to be about; a girl who was not inclined towards religion to begin with goes through a complete transformation because of what life puts her through. People even mentioned the scenes they wanted to see in particular and others wondered how a novel which was very short was going to be turned into a 20 plus episodes play. When the play finally went on air it got a great response but the constant comparison with the novel was nothing short of annoying. Let me add that I do not blame the viewers for drawing such comparisons because that is bound to be their instinctive response. A non reader like me should jump to the idea of getting the opportunity of watching novels which are so renowned on screen because otherwise I would have completely missed out on them but because of some reasons that I have already mentioned and others which I am going to mention now, I think it is a good time to stop making plays based on novels and on stories taken from digests.

Firstly, people who have read these novels have very high expectations from the plays based on them. Many times the plays do not come up to the expectations and people feel more led down than they would be otherwise.

Secondly, readers like the novels the way they are and do not want to see any changes being made in them. A novel is usually very short and a play is much longer so it is essential to add additional characters and some sidetracks which people don’t often appreciate. The readers may not warm up to the new characters and the addition in the original story.

Thirdly, the constant comparisons with the novel are inevitable which result from the expectations of course, kill the fun for even those people who have not read the novel. While watching Zindagi Gulzar Hai I am constantly being reminded of what I am missing out on by those people who have read the novel and so often I am tempted to read the novel, which I am not going to of course at least not while the drama is on air. I think when you read the novel, the story unfolds gradually and so do the different shades of the characters and that is when you fall in love with the characters bit by bit and enjoy the twists and turns. Falling in love twice with characters maybe very hard and is not just the same watching the whole thing dramatized. I am not saying that no one enjoys these dramas, There are many people (who have read the novels) who enjoy these novel based dramas too and enjoy watching their favorite stars play the characters on screen.

Fourthly and most importantly for me (since I do not read novels), novel based dramas have no suspense; one can’t keep wondering what is going to happen next because most of the people already tell you what it is going to be. So you already you know the story and the characters all you have to do is to sit back and watch a plot you already know too well unfold on screen. For me most of the fun lies in sitting on the edge of my seat and speculating what the next turn of events will be.

Enough of talking about novel based dramas let’s talk about those dramas which are not based on novels or stories from digests but are especially written for television. Pakistani drama industry is blessed with very gifted writers who have tons of potential. But many of the dramas that are based on original scripts too lose half their charm when every single twist and turn is shown in the promos and even some of the OSTs tell you half of the story. What is the point of penning down an original script when the entire story will be given away in the promos? The people who are responsible for making the promos should be very careful not to give the entire story away. The promos should be short, sweet and enticing but at the same time keep the suspense alive. Who would want to watch an entire play when most of the story can be followed by watching the promos that come before the play and those that come afterwards too? I must give credit to whoever is responsible for making the promos of Bari Apa for keeping them short and sweet and even very often misleading too. The what-is-going-to-happen-next factor matters a lot to me and I really do not appreciate it when you can easily predict what is going to happen in the next episode due to detailed promos.

I was talking to a very close friend Zubeida the other day about novel based dramas and she rightly pointed out that our writers are greatly endowed and they have oodles of new ideas to share but it seems like it is the channels who want to make dramas based on novels. One of the reasons can be that these novels are already popular and automatically ensure a certain fan following so the channels do not have to work extra hard on advertising them. Do you want to see more dramas based on novels and stories that have already been published in digests? And have there been times when detailed promos ruined the drama watching experience for you? Do share your thoughts.

Fatima Awan.

To become a legend in an acting career, it is not a long list of projects been affiliated with an artist’s name, but the work he does in all his projects. Marina Khan has always been my favorite, in fact I gave grown up following her ‘Dhoop Kinare’, Tanhaiyyan and since then, Marina has always been on the top of the list.