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I can completely understand the country of Kazakhstan hating Sacha Baron Cohen’s character, Borat.

After all, when Donald Trump referred to African nations as “shithole countries” back in 2018, many were up in arms, but Baron Cohen’s character paints Kazakhstan as deeply misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-Semitic.

On Friday, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm was released, once again shining a light on a country that wanted nothing to do with the moustached TV reporter right from the start.

Well, if you can’t beat them, join in, and a new advert promoting the country’s tourism industry is doing just that.

Kairat Sadvakassov, the deputy chairman of Kazakh Tourism, says that the country is, in fact, “very nice!”

Below from the Guardian:

[Kairat said] that adopting Borat’s catchphrase in the campaign “offers the perfect description of Kazakhstan’s vast tourism potential in a short, memorable way.”

“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. 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,” he said.

I guess you can stop being the butt of the joke if you’re in on the joke.

The idea for the campaign was actually pitched by an American, Dennis Keen, who studied in the country, and later worked with a Kazakh professor at Stanford University.

Keen says it wasn’t a very hard pitch, and he was given the green light to make four 12-second ads.

Here they are, pieced together back to back:

Fun facts about Kazakhstan – it is the world’s largest landlocked country, and the ninth-largest country in the world.

Something to bust out next time Borat is mentioned.

Or not, your call.

[source:guardian]