About Project
When advertising faced creative limits, we turned constraint into courage. Tasked in 1993 with strengthening brand recall for Morven Gold amid rising restrictions on cigarette advertising, the team reimagined what a commercial could be by crafting a cultural expression of unity.
We stitched together folk rhythms, dances, and colour from across provinces and filmed the piece at the Lahore Fort. Two hundred dancers and a cinematic direction gave the film scale and emotional clarity. Music fused local melodies with international arrangement to create a soundtrack that felt rooted and epic.
The campaign ran across national channels and quickly outgrew its commercial origins. People recorded it and played it at weddings. It was requested for international forums and entered industry conversations as an example of creative bravery and cultural storytelling.
Execution and Impact
The production combined local choreography and international craft. A London director and a blended music team delivered a film whose direction, sound, and choreography created a single seamless performance that represented Pakistan’s diversity and unity.
The ad earned global recognition and critical acclaim, ranking among the top seven entries out of 7,200 at the London International Advertising Awards. Decades later it remains a teaching piece in creative classrooms and a benchmark for culturally rooted storytelling in Pakistan.
