Vilnius, Lithuania's New Tourism Slogan: 'The G-Spot of Europe'

Source – Lithuania’s capital is pressing ahead with controversial plans for a raunchy international advertising campaign that refers to the city as the “G-spot of Europe”, despite opposition from the church and central government.

Posters advertising the Baltic country’s capital, due to appear from Thursday in Berlin and London, show a young woman lying on bed sheets printed with the map of Europe and clutching a handful of cloth where Vilnius is located.

“Nobody knows where it is, but when you find it, it’s amazing. Vilnius, the G-spot of Europe,” says the advertisement, which is aimed at portraying the city as the continent’s undiscovered treasure. …

Former Vilnius mayor Arturas Zuokas criticised the campaign, telling AFP on Wednesday that “no one in the West is using sexist references in marketing any more, especially when we speak about public authorities”.

Vilnius Archbishop Gintaras Grusas has said the campaign “potentially strengthens the image of Vilnius as a sex tourism city and exploits the sexuality of women”.

Lithuania’s government had asked the city to postpone the campaign until after Pope Francis visits in late September.

With all due respect to former mayor Zuokas and all my Catholic brothers and sisters, but they can lighten the eff up. I’ve got news for them: Sex sells. It sells in the West and it always has and, in spite of your protest to the contrary, it always will.

Besides, whoever has been doing Vilnius’s marketing until now has done a pretty pisspoor job of it, given the fact until now I couldn’t have told you a thing about the place. I couldn’t have even identified it as the capital of Lithuania. Itself a country about which I barely know anything beyond I would avoid it as a Jeopardy! category like it was Medieval Poetry.

But “G-Spot of Europe” at least gives me something to go on. It tells me it’s a place you go for pleasure. It says it’s a popular destination for women. That’s it’s hip and trendy and fashionable. It’s probably hot and steamy. And, more accurately, is a place I’ve never been to in my life and wouldn’t begin to know where to look for it. Does that quite make it a place I want to spend my tourist dollars? Not exactly. But it puts it on the map. And if Francis is the Cool Pope like all the non-Catholics say he is, he’ll appreciate the joke.