Next week, the capital of Lithuania starts a new approximately 0,5 million advertising campaign in the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany and will invite their residents to break stereotypes about Vilnius.
Starting from April 8, the "Expectations vs reality" campaign advertisement will try to shake off the "former Soviet country" label in Vilnius.
"60 percent of Vilnius do not know UK and 40% of the German population, and of those who do, a quarter only know the name. (…) If you don't know how fascinating that city is, then what can you do there?" said Dovilė Aleksandravičienė, the manager of "Go Vilnius" while presenting the new campaign on Thursday.
According to her, a study conducted this year by the KOG Institute of Marketing and Communication Sciences showed that only 8 percent Residents of the UK and Germany know a little more about Vilnius than its name or have more than basic geographical knowledge. Most of them associate Vilnius with Eastern European stereotypes and poverty.
"What is Vilnius associated with for the United Kingdom?" This is Russia - 10%, (...) we see the same in Germany - 17%. thinks that we are that post-Soviet country in a bad way," she added.
According to her, 59 percent British and 50 percent Germans who have visited Vilnius would like to come back here again.
One of the highlights of the campaign is a video in which a British man, after seeing an invitation to come to Vilnius in a newspaper, begins to imagine various stereotypical images, for example, a man urinating on the wall of a wooden shed and turning to say hello, a mother and child riding in a cart with straw. Later, the British are shown images of modern Vilnius.
D. Aleksandravičienė admitted that this kind of advertising is extremely bold, but the research conducted a little earlier showed that it is effective: 53 percent. German and 49 percent after seeing the advertisement, British people started looking for more information about Vilnius, and 36% respectively. and 37 percent wanted to explore the culture and history of Vilnius in more detail, another 27 and 30 percent. - plan a trip to the capital of Lithuania.
"Yes, that ad is bold, we know, but we did research, (…) half of the people who saw this ad started to giggle, who is Vilnius, (…) one out of four people shared the ad with others," she said.
Advertising will mainly be shown online to people who have the greatest potential to be interested in Vilnius.
"In London it will be shown in tube stations and in digital in the whole space, the video format will be in the digital space, it's YouTube, Google and Meta all channels, it's Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok and the same digital channels in Germany, only that there will be is targeted convenient flights to German cities from which there is a convenient connection with Vilnius", explained D. Aleksandravičienė.
According to her. about 0,5 million will be spent on the campaign. euros, and the source of funds is the city's tourist tax.
The author is Goda Vileikytė
