Sacha Baron Cohen's latest fictional character hails from a different foreign land, wears different clothes, and tells different jokes. But the closer you examine Universal's marketing campaign for Baron Cohen's "Bruno," the more the sales pitch starts to look a little like "Borat 2" -- which simultaneously explains "Bruno's" advantages and drawbacks.
When Universal's ribald Baron Cohen comedy lands in theaters July 10, expectations will be high. The studio paid a steep $42.5 million to acquire "Bruno's" distribution rights, and 2006's "Borat" grossed more than $260 million worldwide for 20th Century Fox, a remarkable outcome for an R-rated comedy starring a once-obscure British television comedian.
Universal declined to discuss its "Bruno" marketing methods, but a review of the film's numerous television spots, coming attractions trailers, print advertisements and websites reveals an intentional hand-in-glove attempt to link Baron Cohen's two comedies. "The man who brought you Borat is back," says one spot. Says another: "The man from Borat is back."
The campaign also shows how the studio is wrestling with some of "Bruno's" potential liabilities, including the fact that the title character is potentially more divisive and forceful -- not as likable and naive, in other words, as Borat was.
When Fox released "Borat" three years ago, it faced completely different marketing challenges. Despite having appeared regularly on Baron Cohen's "Da Ali G Show" on HBO, hardly anyone knew who the movie's title character was, and even fewer were familiar with the comedian's satirical style -- the 37-year-old impersonates extreme characters (in "Borat," he's an anti-Semitic Kazakh journalist, in "Bruno," a flamboyant Austrian fashion journalist) who then crafts uncomfortable scenes in which unsuspecting people react to his outlandish behavior.
To help establish "Borat's" modus operandi, Fox showed the film hundreds of times across the country in the months ahead of the film's release, not only bringing the movie to numerous film festivals (including Toronto, Helsinki, Finland, and Traverse City, Mich.) but also conducting countless word-of-mouth screenings for radio stations, social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and entertainment journalists.
Fox also released the film in only 837 theaters ("Transformers: Rise of the Fallen" premiered in 4,234 locations last weekend), letting positive buzz spread from the larger metropolitan cities into the rest of the nation, where "Borat's" audience continued to expand.
