Tomas sent me a link to this poster advertising Vilnius European Capital of Culture 2009 at a bus stop in London. It impressed me that they are making some attempts to reach out to the British audience and it the first piece of marketing I've seen aimed at us. Great!
Thanks to Jo'nas for letting me use the photo.
Created: 2008-06-21 10:29, Tags: Capital of Culture, England, Lithuania, Vilnius, Comments: 0
Today I received an e-mail from the Ambassador Programme for Vilnius European Capital of Culture 2009 offering me a 10% discount for flights with FlyLAL (Lithuanian Airlines). It's a nice offer despite it being purely an advertising campaign for the airline, but not very practical at all. I decided to let the organisers know how I felt about it. I replied to the e-mail I received to the address info@culturelive.lt and it bounced back. Later I tried the address given on the official website (info@vilnius2009.lt) and it bounced back again. It doesn't give a good impression of the event at all. Anyway, here's what I wrote to them:
Dear all
I just want to raise a small point about the little piece of advertising you sent me.
I live in the North of England close to Manchester and Liverpool airport. Flylal will be beginning a Manchester-Vilnius route (via Amsterdam) next year. These tickets cost £400 (£360 when I get the discount). Extremely expensive and out of the question for the type of people you want to attract to Vilnius European Capital of Culture. Moreover, the route via Amsterdam is simply inconvenient.
My proposal to you is to advertise convenient and affordable ways to get to Vilnius from the North of England and Scotland. Such a route would be Liverpool-Kaunas which I regularly take with Ryanair. However, as I discussed in my blog, people have trouble pin pointing Vilnius on a map nevermind Kaunas! Plus, transport connections between Vilnius and Kaunas are not great from the airport.
I hope you can understand where I'm coming from on this. I'm simply very enthusiatic about Lithuania and Vilnius and want the year of culture to be as successful as possible.
Regards
Anna Ward
Created: 2008-05-27 17:19, Tags: Capital of Culture, Lithuania, Vilnius, Comments: 3
Give you a clue:
It's not there... :)
A nice promotional poster for Vilnius European Capital of Culture 2009. I'm giving you some little appetizers and then going for the hard sell in later posts...
Translation: "The world doesn't know about Vilnius. Tell them!"
Created: 2008-04-08 18:43, Tags: Capital of Culture, design, Lithuania, Comments: 0
It's not as grand as it sounds, but I've become an ambassador for Vilnius Capital of Culture 2009. This is thanks to Asta who suggested I should sign up and encourage people to visit Vilnius and Lithuania in 2009. I'm going to dedicate some posts in the coming weeks to doing just that, but I can't guarentee that anyone who reads them will decide to pack their bags and travel to a mysterious country at the other end of Europe...
The problem with my target audience is that they barely know where Lithuania is. One of my collegues thought it was possibly a part of Russia, but it could have been on the moon for all she cared. My first priority is letting people know that Lithuania is a small, yet perfectly formed country with an amazing history and it's own language and culture.
If I get anyone even slightly interested, then I have one other small problem. There are no direct flights from the north of England to Vilnius. The closest you are going to get is flying from Liverpool (Capital of Culture 2008) to Kaunas with Ryanair. Don't get me wrong, Kaunas is a lovely city, but a. even more unheard of than Vilnius and b. a bit of a nightmare to get to Vilnius from the airport.
Here's what you can expect from Kaunas:
"...10.00am Visit a museum celebrating the history of Lithuanian pharmacies. The curator looks slightly shocked to see anybody and regards me with what can only be described as suspicion. He takes me around and tells me about the history of Lithuanian pharmacies. I am extrapolating this, though, as he doesn't speak English.
11.00am Visit a museum celebrating the role of the devil in Lithuanian folklore. Set over three floors, there are more than 2,000 statues of Satan in his various guises. Learn that the devil created alcohol from she-goats' urine.
12.30pm Lunch. I sit at a table outside a restaurant and have cepelinai - translation: Zeppelin - a Lithuanian peasant dish that consists of a rugby ball of potato dough stuffed with meat. It is designed to keep out the cold during the harsh winters. It is not necessarily the best choice when it is 32 degrees. As it is today..."
Read the rest of the article here.
Created: 2008-04-06 16:29, Tags: Capital of Culture, Lithuania, travel, Comments: 1
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