Vilnius is set to launch a new advertising campaign in the UK and Germany next week, worth around 0.5 million euros, and will invite people in the two countries to break stereotypes about the Lithuanian capital.
With this new campaign, entitled “Expectations vs Reality” and starting on April 8, Vilnius will try to shake off the label of the capital of the “former Soviet country”.
“Around 60 percent of people in the UK and 40 percent in Germany don’t know Vilnius. And of those who know it, 25 percent only know the name. If you don’t know the city, what can you do there?” Dovilė Aleksandravičienė, head of the Tourism and Business Development Agency Go Vilnius, said at the campaign launch event on Thursday.
A study carried out this year by the KOG Institute for Marketing and Communication Sciences found that only 8 percent of people in the UK and Germany know more than the name of Vilnius or have more than basic geographic knowledge about it. Most of them associate Vilnius with Eastern European stereotypes and poverty, Aleksandravičienė said.
“What does the UK associate Vilnius with? Ten percent associate it with Russia. We see the same in Germany, as 17 percent think we are a post-Soviet country in a bad way,” she added.
One of the highlights of the campaign is a video in which a British man sees an invitation to come to Vilnius in a newspaper and starts imagining all sorts of stereotypical images. Later, the British man is shown images of contemporary Vilnius.
Aleksandravičienė admits that such advertising is very bold. According to her, however, research proved its effectiveness, as 53 percent of Germans and 49 percent of Britons, who saw it, started looking for more information about Vilnius.
The new campaign will be funded by the city’s tourist tax, the GO Vilnius head said.
Newsletter
Every Friday morning.
