Category: Publicity Stunts

Bruno, You know Bruno - we all know Bruno!

30-Jun-09 10:50

On Sunday morning I was reading the Sunday Times Style magazine, which had an exclusive interview with Bruno, the Austrian fashion reporter (Sacha Noam Baron Cohen's latest fictional character). The first time I was aware of Bruno was when he got up close and personal with Eminem at the MTV Awards.

I think Bruno is one of Sacha's most outrageous characters yet, and is bound to upset a few people along the way, with his ludicrous antics. We all know this is mockery at its best, exaggerating the personalities of real life people who push on the fringes of ‘political incorrectness', which enables his characters to kick up a lot of attention which grab the headlines.

Sacha Noam Baron Cohen first hit our screens as Ali G and then as Borat Sagdiyev stunning the world with his morally shocking opinions and actions. He routinely conducts interviews with well known people while adopting one of his characters, which makes for great television, witnessing their shocked and baffled reaction to his ridiculous line of questioning. Supposedly the interviewees believe that ‘he' is legitimate with the questions and comments he makes.

Sacha is a Golden Globe winning British Actor who has the ability to create comic characters from real life personalities, giving us great entertainment because we are fascinated by his ability to expose real people and cults.

All Sacha's characters start with a shocking PR stunt, such as the most recent one at the MTV Awards, which saw Eminem walk out of the awards after being humiliated by Bruno. Of course Eminem must have been in on this stunt, but it certainly grabbed the headlines and overshadowed the awards themselves. It also brought ‘Bruno' to life for many of us. These stunts create great headlines which ultimately sell papers and Sacha' has relied on this press coverage in order to bring his fictional character to life. Sacha must know (as we all do) sensational stories sell newspapers, so although he is partially a ‘newspaper pimp', he knows how to create headlines.

Hallane