Kazakhstan’s tourism board is embracing a catchphrase from the popular Borat movies in an effort to showcase the former Soviet republic to visitors.
NPR reports that the country’s tourism board is using the movie’s “Very nice!” catchphrase as a slogan for a new ad campaign that promotes Kazakhstan’s natural beauty, architecture, and culture.
In the videos, people describe the country as “very nice,” but they don’t mimic the nasally voice of Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Borat.
In the campaign, Kazakhstan Travel asks, "How can you describe a place this surprising in just two words? As a wise man onсe said, 'Very nice!'”
When the first Borat film debuted in 2006, Kazakhstan threatened to sue Cohen over his portrayal of the country. Now, the country is embracing the film right after the sequel was released.
Tourism officials say the goal of the ad campaign is to show people that the country is Asia's best-kept secret.
The New York Times reports Dennis Keen, an American living in Kazakhstan, is the one who brought up the idea of using the movie slogan for tourism.
Keen and his friend Yermek Utemissov developed four short commercials ending each with, “Kazakhstan. Very nice!”
Baron Cohen told the newspaper that the country he portrays in the film has nothing to do with the actual county of Kazakhstan.
“I chose Kazakhstan because it was a place that almost nobody in the U.S. knew anything about, which allowed us to create a wild, comedic, fake world,” he told the Times. “The real Kazakhstan is a beautiful country with a modern, proud society — the opposite of Borat’s version.”
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