One of the adverts Live Riga will use this summer in Russia and Belarus.

RIGA — The controversial “Live Riga” public relations brand is kicking off a summer ad campaign, set to cost 650,000 lats (€918,000), in over 11 countries in an effort to bring more tourists to Latvia’s capital.

The Riga Tourism Development Office is expanding the scope of the campaign from the seven countries targeted during its winter campaign — Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Finland — to include Belarus, Georgia, Israel and Denmark.

The campaign will include advertising outdoors, in print media and on the Internet. It will focus on people aged 25-55 and will feature the same heart with an eye logo as the winter campaign, which was followed by an increase in tourism to Riga.

Instead of Christmas trees, the summer campaign will highlight Riga’s Art Nouveau architecture, the beaches adjacent to the city, local cuisine and cultural activities.

The campaign will be coordinated by three Latvian ad agencies — SIA Baltic FCB, SIA Creative Media Baltic and SIA Inspired Communications Ltd.

Despite bringing in tourists to the hardest-hit economy on the Baltic Sea, Live Riga has been criticized for a lack of transparency in its creation and a conflict of interest with the Riga city council.

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.

— Journalist Didzis Melbiksis contributed to this article.

This article is free to view. To read Baltic Reports’ subscription-only articles, click here.