Sacha Baron Cohen is a genius. Can you remember the last time a movie was so well hyped?
He's not only a comic genius, he's clearly a marketing genius, too. His brilliant satire is breaking through the clutter with orginal ideas to promote the film, from press conference, to numerous in-character interviews. The way he is blurring reality with performance is a thing of beauty. The Kazakh president has made some very public and pretty hilarious invitations to Borat to visit the country, but this only adds to the life-imitating-art aspect of the whole thing.
As a comedy, the character and movie hit on multiple levels, combining layers of satire with embarassing physical comedy. Even though the joke is ultimately on Americans, they'll probably love it just the same, assuming that the point of the whole thing is to make fun of foreigners.
Engaging, brilliant use of old and new media and a multi-layered idea: sounds like a strategy any marketer can learn from.
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