Sacha Baron Cohen, the man behind 2006’s smash comedy Borat, is also the man behind Bruno. The movie opens Friday.

AP /

HOLLYWOOD — Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest fictional character hails from a different foreign land, wears different clothes and tells different jokes. But the closer you examine Universal’s marketing campaign for Baron Cohen’s Bruno, the more the sales pitch starts to look like Borat 2 — which simultaneously explains Bruno’s advantages and drawbacks.

When Universal’s ribald Baron Cohen comedy lands in theaters July 10, expectations will be high. The studio paid $42.5 million to acquire Bruno’s distribution rights, and Borat grossed more than $260 million, a remarkable outcome for an R-rated comedy starring a once-obscure British TV comedian.

Universal declined to discuss its Bruno marketing methods, but a review of the film’s numerous TV spots, coming attractions trailers, print ads and Web sites reveals an intentional hand-in-glove attempt to link Baron Cohen’s two comedies. “The man who brought you Borat is back,” says one spot. The campaign shows how the studio is wrestling with some of Bruno’s potential liabilities, including that the title character is potentially more divisive and forceful — not as likable and naive, in other words, as Borat was.

When Fox released Borat three years ago, it faced different marketing challenges. Despite having appeared on Baron Cohen’s Da Ali G Show on HBO, hardly anyone knew who the movie’s title character was, and even fewer were familiar with the comedian’s satirical style — the 37-year-old impersonates extreme characters (in Borat, he’s an anti-Semitic Kazakh journalist, in Bruno, an Austrian fashion journalist) who then crafts uncomfortable scenes in which unsuspecting people react to his outlandish behavior.

To help establish Borat’s modus operandi, Fox showed the film hundreds of times in the months ahead of the film’s release, not only bringing the movie to numerous film festivals (including Toronto, Helsinki, Finland, and Traverse City, Mich.) but also conducting word-of-mouth screenings for radio stations, social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and entertainment journalists.

Fox also released the film in only 837 theaters (Transformers: Rise of the Fallen premiered in 4,234 locations), letting buzz spread from the larger metropolitan cities into the rest of the nation, where Borat’s audience continued to expand.

Unlike Fox, Universal will release Bruno widely immediately. One rival studio estimated that Bruno could enjoy an opening weekend gross of more than $30 million.

Universal has suggested to ticket buyers that if they liked Borat, they will love Bruno, which is undeniably more outrageous. At the same time, the studio is courting female moviegoers (Bruno spots have been running in Gossip Girl and The Bachelorette, shows that also have followings from gay males), in hopes of expanding Baron Cohen’s fan base.

In part because the film has been criticized by gay activists for its depiction of homosexuality (Bruno is a gay man obsessed with anal sex, bondage wear and sex toys), Universal has used its TV spots and preview trailers to show that many of the film’s pranks have nothing to do with the title character’s sexual orientation or how people in the movie react to his sexual conduct.

Almost every TV spot shows Baron Cohen, trying to hide his face from paparazzi, running into a wall at the airport. Several spots include a sequence where he tells a purported terrorist that Osama Bin Laden “looks like a kind of dirty wizard or homeless Santa.” Many spots have included Baron Cohen’s appearance on Richard Bey’s TV talk show, where the actor says he adopted a black infant in a swap for an iPod.

At the same time, Universal is emphasizing that Baron Cohen is playing a character — the film’s publicity material, in a departure from how Baron Cohen typically operates, reveals how he and his filmmaking team staged the movie’s set pieces.

The ultimate test will be whether the film’s earliest ticket-buyers recommend Bruno to their friends. If they do, Bruno could play through Labor Day. If not, it will crawl to the end of July.