“The Bands are Back!” Pepsi had announced last year and rolled out a grand stage iridescent in glow-in-the-dark blue. Picking up from where it first started in 2002 before fading out, the Pepsi Battle Of The Bands (BOTB) became bigger, better and glitzier in its second season. Young, talented bands, hitherto barely managing to survive in a bleak music scene, were shortlisted and made to battle it out on a mainstream platform, vying for audience votes and encouragement from a panel of four celebrity judges.

There were many that cheered — this was the show that would rejuvenate Pakistan’s tottering music industry, the victor in the Cola wars, the harbinger of a thriving, rip-roaring brand culture that would soon take over the country. But did the bands truly come back? Or is the show merely a pawn in a larger ‘Battle Of The Brands’, an ingenious marketing strategy devised to boost soft drink profits while also simultaneously jumpstarting — to some extent — the career of a few lucky bands?

For the love of music?

Of course, it would be naïve to assume that a major sponsor would pour millions into any show without the hope of getting profits in return. From BOTB to Coke Studio, Nescafe Basement or even the Lux Style Awards, a major project is never supported merely for the love of craft. There is always the hope of financial gain and because it makes business sense.

On the flipside, the artists involved in the projects certainly benefit from the mileage. In Pakistan particularly, where music has long been sliding downhill, soft drinks have played a major role in supporting local artists. Coke Studio’s success is phenomenal and BOTB has managed to help bands that would never have had been able to make a mark without the hype generated by a major TV show.

Pepsi Battle of the Bands has always claimed it’s bringing music bands back in vogue. But now as its third season gets underway, how satisfied are the contestants from Season Two?

Ahmed Jilani of Badnaam, the band that was the runner-up in BOTB last year, recounts, “Our fan following just increased exponentially once we were part of the show. We were still the same people, making the same music but, by the fifth episode, it was just phenomenal how people were noticing us. We had earlier been living in a social media bubble which used to seem all-important but it was then that we realised just how extensive the reach of TV and radio could be. Suddenly, I started getting Facebook requests from fans and I was so bowled over that I would accept them all until within days I had reached the ‘Friends’ limit of 5,000! And when I went to the mall one day with my mother, people started coming up to me to meet me. It was surreal because I still looked and dressed the same but the show had generated so much recognition for me.”

Bilal Ali of Kashmir, last year’s winning band, has similar recollections. “For seven to eight years we had been creating music and no one had taken notice of it. But when we sang those songs on the BOTB stage, people listened to them and loved them.”

Spiraling backwards in time, there was once another band of young boys called Vital Signs that had entered into a contract with Pepsi. The Signs brought together a blend that was new to Pakistan, mixing modern pop with classic Pakistani melodies, veering easily from romanticism to patriotism, gift-wrapping it all in shiny new boy-band packaging. They were instantly appealing, yes, but there’s no denying that their careers were spurred on to greater heights with the help of the financial clout supplied to them by their soft drink sponsor. Concerts, albums, glossy videos and advertising — the Signs defined Pakistani music in the ’80’s and early ’90’s and as an extension of this, so did Pepsi.

But while some of these investments may have been made for the love of music, there were other gains that were obviously being kept in mind. The Signs’ biggest hit was the patriotic pop number Dil Dil Pakistan and, much to the dismay of musical purists, the band decided to sing it as Pepsi Pepsi Pakistan in a major campaign. The success achieved by this could be measured in terms of profits but, also, in more intangible ways. The soft drink seeped into the nation’s subconscious as one of their own and not one that was actually owned by a foreign company.

It’s understandable that the winning band will get more attention than the runner-up but we just thought that we’d be getting promoted more than this,” admits Badnaam’s Ahmed Jilani. “Our video is going to be shot soon but ideally it should have already been released.”

But so what if profits were gained from the association with the Vital Signs? Had Pepsi’s colossal budgets not been available to the band, it might never have managed to become the nationwide phenomenon that it was.

Hitches and glitches

The purpose behind citing this trip down memory lane is that one expects similar musical goliaths to be created by Pepsi now that it is helming BOTB. The brand has done it before with great aplomb — it can certainly do so again.

To its credit, the spotlight has been placed on Kashmir frequently. Over the past year, the band has toured the country in sponsored concert tours, their images are on Pepsi billboards and they have been featured ostensibly in television ad campaigns. The band’s video, Kaghaz ka Jahaz has been created in association with the brand and another video, for the song Pareshaniyan, is currently underway. An album, titled Khwaab has also been released on the Internet and while, for now, it only features three songs, the band intends to keep on adding more songs to it.

Similarly, an ‘album’ consisting of three songs has also been released by Badnaam. Pepsi took on well-known veterans Xulfi and Shahi Hasan for the production of both bands’ albums.

It doesn’t make sense, though, that three songs can be said to represent an ‘album’. Shouldn’t a complete selection of seven to eight songs have been released? No album covers were created and there was no underlying theme that was visible. If band culture is truly to be brought back, how can it be brought back with incomplete albums?

The songs are available for free downloading — as opposed to paid downloads. Kashmir’s Bilal Ali observes that this is just how the music industry now works. “The days when artists would gain from album sales are over unfortunately. Now, all we can do is toil over our songs and videos so that they can become popular and we can then get offers for concerts which are now our main source of income. Pepsi has helped us with two of our videos but we are also self-financing two more videos, for the songs Dhoop and Khwaab.”

The same deal given to Kashmir was extended to runner-up band Badnaam but they haven’t been as noticeable. For instance, in the promotional BOTB TVC currently being aired, Kashmir is seen for a longer time while Badnaam is seen for a shorter time, performing with the show’s judge Meesha Shafi. “It’s understandable that the winning band will get more attention than the runner-up but we just thought that we’d be getting promoted more than this,” admits Badnaam’s Ahmed Jilani. “Our video is going to be shot soon but ideally it should have already been released.”

According to a source that chose to speak to Icon anonymously, the winning band and the runner-up were informed that Pepsi would produce a ‘maximum of three videos’ for them. This may sound great on paper to the random observer, but it basically means that the brand has the leeway to produce just one video (or even none) should it be inclined to do so. The videos, if produced at all, have to abide by stringent budgets. Apparently, the lion’s share of finances is set aside for the show itself and its marketing.

And given that the third season of BOTB is now underway and the focus will now shift towards the next batch of contestants, there’s a chance that Badnaam will just manage to have one video released by the brand.

But music wins …

Nevertheless, had BOTB not been launched, local band culture would merely have continued to simmer underground, never really managing to make a mark in mainstream entertainment and move towards bigger monetary prizes. Jasim Haider of the Pindi Boys, a band that was in the selected top eight last year, recounts the show as a memorable experience.

“We sent in our demo thinking that we would never be accepted but, then, suddenly we were,” he recalls. “We were supposed to perform before the judges and our band’s drummer was studying in Turkey and no one had the money to buy him a ticket to fly back to Pakistan. We scrounged around and borrowed money and managed to get him to Karachi, thinking that we’d give it our best shot but we were unlikely to be selected for the next round. To our surprise, the judges really liked the way we sounded and we kept getting shortlisted for the next round. In the fourth episode, we sang our song Korina and the judges liked it so much that we couldn’t sleep that night because we were so happy. The next night, we were unable to sleep because we felt that we wouldn’t be able to perform as well the next time round!” he laughs.

Post-BOTB, business has taken off for the band. “Brands approach us for concerts and we’re quite busy. It wouldn’t have had been possible without the show.”

According to Misbah Ghani, Senior Brand Manager at PepsiCo Inc., the brand has organised more than 150 concerts across Pakistan over the past year. “The purpose has been to bring the bands to the forefront to be seen by a mass national audience. We flexed our partnership with PCB to get both Badnaam and Kashmir the chance to perform at the Gaddafi Stadium, in front of a huge stadium audience with live coverage on national television for the opening ceremony of the Pakistan vs Sri Lanka series. Similarly, they performed in the Pakistan vs World XI hockey series. Our sister brand 7UP has supported both bands by organising their performances at food festivals across the country.”

“Beyond this, the top eight bands have gotten monumentally more work after being featured in the show. Badnaam had only performed in two or three concerts in 2017 and has already gotten 50 concerts this year. Pindi Boys were signed on as ambassadors for Islamabad United. All this happened after they gained recognition and fan followings through BOTB.”

All this means that the bands are back — but they could be back a bit more. They could be nationwide sensations. They could be holding court on our TV channels with a slew of high-end, memorable music videos. A bit of image-building could have elevated them as youth icons. They could have truly been ‘back’. Not yet.

Published in Dawn, ICON, July 22nd, 2018