For all of us who have found ourselves flooded with news items about Borat, aka Sacha Baron Cohen, and his new movie 'Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan', it is again a reminder of the coming of age of the new media. Sacha in his earlier role as Ali G first in UK and then on HBO got some of the brightest people in America answering the stupidest questions in the world. In one of his famous interviews, he asked the Deputy Director of CIA about how to punish suicide bombers!!
His new role as Borat has the potential to paint a whole nation in so tainted colors that it would take some effort to come out of that image. The Kazhakhstan which he supposedly left to come to US to meet Pamela Anderson drinks fermented horse urine, gives death penalty for baking bagels, and exports over 300 tonnes of human pubis per year. Borat's favorite hobby is to shoot dogs. Clearly, most of the Kazhak people are deeply offended by this spoof.
Beyond the spoof part, this again proves the massive power of the new media to disseminate content to segments of audience which are big enough to make such ventures viable. This also proves the loosening of grip of traditional media houses and their ability to target every audience which is there in the world. No matter how offended certain people are with Borat, there are an equal number of people who love this character. How do you as a big company associate with such a story, reap the benefits of reaching a certain audience but avoid the wrath of the opposite audience? Ownership of distribution channels is definitely not going to help..in fact, owning such content like Borat's movie might also become a headache!! The big question is whether there is some way of owning the audience by delivering content( produced inhouse or otherwise) by having a vast array of characters, story lines and delivery mediums? How important are open forums like YouTube or a MySpace in such a scenario?
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