Business

I’ve been a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen for some time now. I enjoyed his HBO show. His primary character Ali G was well executed and I was excited for his recently released movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. I blogged about the movie a few weeks before its release.

Today, I came across a post entitled “What Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Borat.”

The post has three primary points:

Take risks, without fear.
Audacious, yet credible.
Never stop selling.

I agree with this analysis and wanted to expand on a few other points. What really makes this “sell”, is how well it is delivered. This only comes with practice. Many of these same jokes have been tweaked and practiced numerous times on a variety of subjects. Even in the movie, Sacha Baron Cohen includes small clips of his previous work. My primary point is that a good entrepreneur has done it before and learned from his/her mistakes. It is almost certain that Sacha’s jokes, and impeccable timing, came through numerous failed attempts at solid delivery. Practice, practice, practice… never give up.

There was a grassroots, viral, marketing campaign that leveraged technology. Beyond the classic myspace campaign, Sacha also stirred up lots of free press by irritating the Kazakhstani government. He registered www.borat.kz, which, once they discovered it, created lots of press when the country revoked it. Following his appearance on MTV Europe’s Music Award show, the country of Kazakhstan spoke out publicly against Sacha Cohen.