Editor's note: The video above was published June 29, 2020
After years of rejecting the depiction of Kazakhstan from Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat," the country's tourism board is now embracing it with a new slogan.
Not only is "Very nice!" the new slogan of Kazakh Tourism, but it is also Borat's signature catchphrase in both his 2006 and newly released 2020 sequel "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm."
Kazakh Tourism has released a series of ads to highlight the new campaign. One of them features mountains, snow and hiking before cutting to a man with a selfie stick who says "Very nice!"
Subsequent ads feature the country's food, city-life and culture with each incorporating a person saying 'Very nice!"
"[The slogan] offers the perfect description of Kazakhstan’s vast tourism potential in a short, memorable way," Kairat Sadvakassov, deputy chairman of Kazakh Tourism, said in a statement to the Huffington Post. "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."
The New York Times reports that the idea of the new slogan came from an American who now lives and provides tours of Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty.
Dennis Keen said he got the idea while waiting out the coronavirus pandemic and pitched it to the tourism board where he got an immediate yes.
"I’ve had a lot of free time,” Keen told the New York Times. “Also, I just had a baby. When he grows up, I don’t want him to be ashamed of Borat. I want him to say, ‘That’s when my dad started this whole fun project.’”
Kazakhstan's acceptance of the film is far from its reaction when the first Borat film was released in 2006. Back then, the Kazakh government banned the film and even placed ads in newspapers, including the New York Times, trying to defend the country. The government also threatened to sue Cohen.
In the original film, Cohen, who plays Borat, pretends to be a Kazakhstani television reporter who goes around America making anti-semitic comments about Jews and misogynistic jokes about women.