Sacha Baron Cohen and his team at Paramount have done an amazing job promoting ‘The Dictator’, besides the $500,000 Super Bowl TV spot, hype has been created through his will he/won’t he appearance at the Oscars where he eventually turned up in character and poured the ‘ashes of recently deceased NorthKorean dictator, Kim Jong Il’ over the carpet.
Moreover, his website heightens the satire even further – the website promotes the ficitonal state of ‘Wadiya’ and there are links to many recent dictators, amusing merchandise to buy, photoshopped images of Cohen with dictators and of course, links to trailers, promotional videos and reviews.
The advertising is relentless; there is an iphone ‘Wadiyan Games’ app and the offical Youtube hosts 80 videos and has enjoyed over 24 million views. Cohen is releasing videos in role for a whole host of events, most recently the Champions League Final. He has also appeared in characters on many TV chat shows, but unfortunately for him, the BBC and a number of UK radio and TV channels refused to interview him in role. Cohen went on a 2 week road trip of Europe (including Cannes Festival) and also spent time in Australia promoting the film – with a $75 million budget, the advertising team have pulled all the stops.
On May 11th, the premiere actually took place and once again, Cohen garnered media attention with another stunt:
Doha College Media Studies 