RIGA — The highly-anticipated “Live Riga” ad campaign will start this month, the Riga Tourism Development Bureau and its sponsors announced at a contentious press conference Monday.
While the bureau and organizers airBaltic CEO Bertolt Flick and Riga Vice Mayor Ainārs Šlesers were eager to tell journalists about the campaign’s goals, Flick castigated journalists that asked about which marketing agencies are involved in the campaign.
I heart Riga
The winter portion of the campaign will target seven countries: Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Finland. Riga will be presented as a city which is easy to reach, but emotionally hard to leave and as the place where the first Christmas tree in the world was put up 499 years ago. The connecting element is a heart-shaped figurine with a gigantic eye that stays in Riga even after the tourist has left the city.
The bureau has not released an estimate of an anticipated increase in tourists as a part of the controversial campaign. However Flick, chairman of the bureau’s board assured that the allocated funds for this year — 898,000 lats (€1.3 million) — would be spent to the last santim.
“The budget number might seem big, but if you divide it on seven countries, it is way too little. One million for such a campaign is far from enough. But we will combine it with airBaltic’s marketing budget, then it will be more money,” Flick told the press.
The campaign will continue next year, and actually only then it will show some real results, according to Šlesers.
“We have a dramatic shortage of time,” Šlesers said, adding that to develop and launch a full-scale program will take almost a year. In any case, next Christmas in Riga visitors will be greeted by numerous incandescent street decorations.
“Next year Riga city will most probably be properly illuminated by Nov. 1,” Šlesers.
The campaign’s official website www.liveriga.lv, which will include both information for casual tourists and visitors with a business agenda, is still under construction.
The overall aim of the campaign, worth six million lats (€8.4 million) for this year and the next, is to get back the tourists that Riga lost because of the damage the economic crisis dealt to the tourism industry. Hotels have experienced 40 percent income decrease during the first half of 2009 while unemployment is at nearly 20 percent.
“We desperately need people who spend money here. And tourists do usually spend considerable amounts of money. Indeed, the tourism sector is the one where you can create huge effect quickly with very little investments. The state and Riga city council cannot build a car factory in half a year, but it is fully possible to create jobs through a powerful marketing campaign,” Flick said.
Not off to a good start: examples of the "Live Riga" ads sent to journalists contained a major spelling error, reading "RIGA CITY: EASY TO GO, HARD TO LIVE!" which wouldn't give the best impression to tourists about Latvia's capital.
Major spelling error in ad campaign
But “Live Riga” campaign has received criticism at the get-go. Besides corruption allegations, the visual campaign materials that were sent to journalists included posters with the slogan “Riga city: easy to go, hard to live!” instead of “Riga city: easy to go, hard to leave!”
Later the bureau corrected the posters and sent out the right version, but the original posters have already been published by media outlets and social networking sites.
Lack of transparency
Flick refused to answer questions about what firms are involved in the creation of the ad campaign and scolded two journalists at the conference that asked questions about this. Flick called Sanita Jemberga of citadiena.lv “a practitioner of destructive journalism” and a journalist from newspaper Diena was told to “perhaps look for a different kind of job.”
Various Latvian newspapers have quoted unnamed sources within the advertising sector that claim at least part of the project will be commissioned to Latvia’s Mooz! advertising agency, run by Eriks Stendzenieks, who has done political ads of Šlesers’ LPP/LC Party.
The Riga Tourism Development Bureau tender specifies communication objective for the next year as follows: “To establish image of Riga City Council as entrepreneurial, dynamic, business minded, effective, experienced and highly professional team seeing tourism development as priority.”
Analysts from the anti-corruption agency Delna said they do not understand how promoting Riga for tourists can be done by promoting politicians from the city council.
Flicks and Slesers have a great idea, can’t deny. The major problem is as we can read in the end of article.
It’s good and suitable if main and most powerful politicians support this kind of ideas but they do not need to be in charge or handling that themselves. Especially not promoting themselves.
Also some transparent public tender could be good because of using public money. At least it would look like transparent.
Nevertheless it’s going to be interesting to see whether that failed slogan will be in same category with “nothing special” :)
The spelling mistake is hilarious and so typical of the Baltic States. Why on earth can’t they get a native speaker of English to proof-read these things before they send them out? It’s idiotic. Almost all of the Baltic translation firms only employ young, inexperienced locals who at best have a tardy grasp of the languages they purport to be experts in. I even know of one native English speaker who emailed one of these firms to point out all the mistakes on their website, he was promptly told (in very bad English) that it was he who was incorrect!
Also, rather than “Riga City”, wouldn’t “City of Riga” sound better?
Actually you probably dont even need the word ‘City’….. just Riga would suffice, why do you need to add that its a city? More succinct, more to the point -> Riga: Easy to leave, Hard to live
Aaaargh… have a look closer at the bottom tagline….Now for 499 years – what does that mean??? I agree with my noname brother – its not hard, run it past a native speaker!
This is the best mistranslation I’ve seen in Latvia since “language in jelly” (I kept promising to get myself a can before the cannery changed it to “tongue”).
Part of the problem is that many balk at paying native speakers and experienced translators… but I’ve also been told I’m wrong when pointing out errors and ungainly phrases.
I’ve been wondering all the time, how to spell “Live Riga”… Is it [liv] or [laiv]?
Ive also never been able to figure out the correct pronunciation… I have asked someone who knows someone within the campaign to tell me definitively what its supposed to be……on a side note after hours of pondering I just realized what the heart with an eye is …. a visual represenation of I LOVE ( eye heart)… pretty tricky, but it took me awhile and Im sure it will go over the heads of many people its aimed at.
“Birthplace of Christmas Tree.
Now for 499 Years.”
Oh yes, I hadn’t noticed that bit! Hilarious. Honestly, though – this looks like a high-profile, expensive marketing campaign. Surely they could have spared a few Lats for some proof-reading? There are dozens of native-speakers of English working in the language schools in Vilnius. Surely it would have taken them minutes to have corrected these ridiculous mistakes for a nominal fee?!
I’m sure it is another joke by Latvians, they couldn’t do a mistake like this!
it appears that most people fail to see the true beauty of the campaign. it is virtually impossible to create this much publicity by investing a measely million or so. in this case it worked beyond belief. Like someone said- there is no publicity like bad publicity.
Congratulations, latvia is now back on a shiny christmaslit path to recovery!
hello, just wanted to say that I am also working on a web site in riga that is dedicated to tourism (started it before liveriga made their site). also I met people from liveriga.com in the past, had a very negative impression, and now started a section in the site that elaborates about this brand / company / organization
personally as you can see I have a negative opinion about this organization and I’ll update information in this page: http://www.playriga.com/index/general-information/tourist-web-sites/liveriga.com
best wishes