(TAN): It was the year 2006 when comedian Sacha Baron Cohen released his satirical mockumentary about the fictional Kazakh reporter Borat Sagdiyev. The film, ‘Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan’ was banned in Kazakhstan.
The former Soviet republic took out a four-page ad in The New York Times defending its national honour. The government also threatened to sue Cohen, for depicting the people of the country as anti-Semitic, mysogynistic troglodytes who drank fermented horse urine. The film, however, went on to make over USD 262 million at the box office and surprisingly, turned out to be a great boon for Kazakhstan’s tourism industry.
The embassy’s website traffic doubled in the month following the movie’s release and over the next several years, the number of tourists to Kazakhstansurged tenfold.
Fourteen years later, Borat is back with a sequel named ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’.
This time, Kazakhstan’s response is very different. The country’s tourism department has actually rolled out a brand new tourism slogan using one of Borat’s preferred catchphrases – “Very nice!”
The campaign includes four promotional videos that show tourists exploring Kazakhstan’s local food, beautiful landscapes, bustling markets and cities. At the end of each short video, the tourists say some variation of: “Wow, very nice!”
The tourism board timed their campaign to coincide with the movie’s release, according to a news release.
According to the New York Times, the tourism board were persuaded to use the catchphrase by American Dennis Keen and his friend Yermek Utemissov. They pitched the idea and produced the advertisements.
“Kazakhstan’s nature is very nice. Its food is very nice. And its people, despite Borat’s jokes to the contrary, are some of the nicest in the world,” said Kairat Sadvakassov, deputy chairman of Kazakh Tourism, in a statement. “We would like everyone to come experience Kazakhstan for themselves by visiting our country in 2021 and beyond, so that they can see that Borat’s homeland is nicer than they may have heard.”
The campaign is also expected to attract visitors after the Covid-19 pandemic, which has decimated the travel industry.
