Europe's G-spot: Vilnius pulls out all the stops
The city of Vilnius will launch a new PR campaign in Berlin and London on Wednesday in a bid to raise the city's profile and attract tourists. The Lithuanian capital is presented as Europe's G-spot with the advertising slogan: "Nobody knows where it is, but when you find it it's amazing". The Lithuanian government had requested in vain that the launch of the campaign be postponed until after the Pope's visit at the end of September. Rightly so?
Cheap and tacky
Artūras Zuokas, a former mayor of Vilnius, writes in Lrytas that the campaign is in poor taste:
“Not even an organiser of stag parties would dare to come up with something like this, and it's not an ad for Durex [condoms] either. No, this is how our capital city is presenting itself to the world! Come to Vilnius, Europe's G spot, says the mayor, who has rejected the government's plea that the campaign launch at least be postponed. Presenting Vilnius to the world in this way is simply cheap and tacky (and here I'm still being politically correct). Old Europe has long viewed its eastern neighbours as cheap countries where lovely women are easy game.”
Vilnius has nothing to lose
Inga Romanovskienė, director of the city of Vilnius's marketing department, defends the campaign in a Facebook post reprinted in Delfi:
“This reminds me of the fairy tale about the emperor's new clothes (whoops, sorry, can't stop being perverse). Before the campaign was developed we ran surveys in Germany and Britain. It's actually embarrassing to present the results. Because 40 to 50 Germans and Brits out of 1,000 don't know what Vilnius is or where it's located! That's four to five percent!!!!! My dears, even in theory we don't stand a chance of sullying our image, because we simply don't have one. And that is truly a reason to be ashamed!”