by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 5:22 PM ET, Wed November 6, 2019
Here's a question for travelers everywhere: do know where Europe's G-spot is?
One country seems to have an answer to that question - at least a tongue-in-cheek answer that is.
In an effort to raise its profile among globetrotters, Lithuania's capital of Vilnius launched a bold and controversial marketing campaign earlier this year that was viewed as downright scandalous in some quarters.
The campaign dubbed Vilnius the G-spot of Europe and featured an image of a naked woman lying down with her eyes closed while clutching a sheet, obviously overcome with pleasure. The sheet meanwhile was printed with a map of Europe and the woman was shown grasping the spot that marked Vilnius.
The campaign's tagline read: "Vilnius - the G-spot of Europe. Nobody knows where it is, but when you find it - it's amazing."
Posters advertising Vilnius began appearing in London and Berlin in summer 2018 and the campaign immediately went viral. It appeared in more than 1,000 media publications, reaching an audience of 600 million people. The website vilniusgspot.com was visited by more than 100,000 people from all over the world while the searches on Google trebled.
Before all was said and done the campaign was even featured on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
Vilnius had set out to attract more attention amongst Western Europe's millennials and to invite them to experience all the city has to offer with its boundary-pushing campaign. And as the city had hoped, the campaign accomplished that goal, triggering a 12 percent uptick in tourism to the under the radar destination.
"We may be small globally but really strong!" Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Simasius said in a brief announcement.
Fast forward to this week, and the brazen ad campaign has just been awarded an International Travel & Tourism Gold Award, which was presented at World Travel Market London.
"International tourism is a highly competitive field where only a few manage to stand out," Inga Romanovskiene, head of the official development and business promotion agency Go Vilnius, said in a statement. "Even competing with the giants of tourism - such as Las Vegas - was a great achievement.''
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