Bruno’s Ass vs. Eminem’s Face – Marketing Stunt Wins!
Posted by | Tommy Liu | June 2, 2009 | What are Your Thoughts?
I’m a little late to chime in on the Bruno’s Ass vs. Eminem’s face incident that happened Sunday night during the MTV Movie Awards, but here’s my two cents anyhow. In case you missed it the video is above – Bruno, a gay Austrian fashionista played by Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) in the upcoming movie Bruno, gracefully soared across the air of the amphitheater and lands head first into the lap of rap megastar Eminem, who has been suspected to be homophobic. In a rage Eminem and his posse D12 forcefully removed Bruno and stormed out the theater and never returned.
This incident had the web buzzing; debating if this was real or a planned stunt. The majority speculated this to be a marketing stunt and a great one at that. If you’ve seen Borat then you know Cohen’s antics can be distasteful(ly funny) and unforgiving, but will definitely get people talking. When Cohen first descends the camera locks on to Eminem for his reaction well before Cohen is even near the rapper. As Cohen dangles in the air he conveniently quips “is the real Slim Shady about to stand up?” a similar lyric in a popular Eminem song.
Couple Cohen’s antics with one of the most popular and controversial star of this generation and you are bound to generate talk around the water-cooler, which is great for Cohen to promote his movie and great for MTV to up their viewership which has been lacking. But the million dollar question surrounding this ordeal is “was Eminem involved from the beginning?”
Let’s see, Eminem had to of had a mic on him to be heard so clearly, and as Jon Leung expresses here “MTV is highly dependent on celebrities for its content, so to genuinely offend such an influential figure just seems like an extremely poor PR move. Just think of the damage Eminem could cause by turning down all future live performances and interviews for MTV.” Some speculate Eminem was involved in the stunt to push his recently released (May 19th) album Relapse (a very good album – Relapse 2 to be released later this year).
I’m going to have to disagree with this point because under which marketing plan does another man’s genitals in your face result in sales? (Okay, maybe in some aspect of the adult industry, but we’ll keep that in the closet.) Eminem sold 608,000 copies of Relapse in its first week easily making it the #1 album and proving his relevance to today even after going four years without releasing an album. So I doubt Eminem needs to “brown-nose” if you will to further along sales. Also, when Eminem was face to face with Bruno’s crotch he seemed like he truly got testy (pun absolutely intended) and was upset, but then again his performance in 8 Mile was very believable.
Given these factors I’m going to say Eminem, Cohen, and MTV were all involved in the stunt, but Eminem might not haven been entirely clued in. What do you think? Drop me a Tomment.
*Update* Eminem confirms incident was a stunt. Ha! Called it.
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Tags: 8 mile > borat > bruno > d12 > eminem > marketing stunt > mtv > relapse > relapse 2 > sacha baron cohen > slim shady > supercool creative > tommy liu > us magazine
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