She is not afraid of flaunting her true personality. She hums cheap Bollywood numbers, voraciously reads Dosheeza digest, follows the latest fashion from Indian Idol, wears lots of loud make-up and gossips with her girlfriends about the shopkeeper down the street who offers her free easyloads on her new Qmobile phone. The best part is, she doesn’t feel compelled to act all lady-like, to dress modestly and cover her head, to speak gently and generally mask her true bubbly persona when in public. She is what she is and proud of it.
Hero TV was recently launched by the Express Media Group and just like our vivacious ^Reshmi, it is what it is and it does what it does and does not have to buffer its entertaining drama with bogus act-outs of sensible journalism every once in a while. Take note, you gossip-loving, TRP-worshipping dunyas, geos, expresses, samaas and arys. With program titles like Khabron ki Aandhi, Baaji Sab Jaanti Hai and Mehboob Aapke Qadmon Mein, this is the world premiere of Pakistani yellow journalism.
Hero TV is as melodramatic as it gets. Everything from the name, on-air graphics (unrelentingly and unapologetically sensationalistic) and the content itself fit in perfectly with a very well defined brand identity of which theatrics are a pivotal aspect. After all, it is our own journalistic culture is it not? No need to Understand the Difference when a simple Khabron Ki Aandhi can do.
Apart from being the modernization of the eveninger journalism culture, Hero TV also offers a very potent marketing insight. Being a cross section into the lower and lower-middle classes of the population, the channel openly embraces our love for the dramatic and sensational, and presents a very lucid picture of the kind of content and entertainment that our masses really enjoy. The masses that make up the bulk of our whatever-million population. So yeah, marketing geniuses, take note and scrap the ‘aspirational brand’ bullshit we were taught in b-school, and embrace our true sensibilities.
