Meet Ad verum, LCI’s PRGN partner in Vilnius, Lithuania

By Akvile Vzesniauskaite, Creative Manager at Ad verum

In a few sentences, please tell us about your firm, your role and what makes your agency unique.

We truly believe our attitude is unique – whatever we do, we do it with passion and complete dedication. If we don’t like our work, we don’t charge. If we see that we won’t be able to deliver the best results, we don’t take the client. All the team members have the same values when it comes to quality and team work. At the same time, we strongly believe in employee empowerment, since they are the people who shape and lead the agency. Yes, we are an employee owned agency. Most of the decisions we take together, and everyone matters. That gives our clients a clear message we can be trusted, and has seen us grow from a two person boutique to an agency with 18 amazing people without any side investments. We’ve always believed in what we do.

What is the market for PR like in your city?

As we work not only in Lithuania, but in the surrounding region too, we shouldn’t say city here. Let’s say country, or even countries. Most of the clients coming to the region and opening an office in Vilnius (the capital of Lithuania) require full support in the entire Baltic region, so we adapted to meet this need. We are tech-savvy and work a lot with online news channels as they are gaining more and more importance, especially for opinion leadership and education. Social media is a giant, and PR campaigns are now always integrated. In addition, there’s a growing need for digital communication in the region and the PR landscape is rapidly changing, just as it is across the rest of the world.

What was one of the best/most creative PR ideas you heard about this week?

Recently there was a municipality election in Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania, and the city is now led by a new mayor and his team. Kaunas is now going through a lot of changes, and one of the most fascinating is the municipality’s communication with the public. Public institutions are usually seen as closed, conservative and grey. However, Kaunas is proving that the city can also be colourful, modern and have crazy projects.

Here are a couple of recent examples of their creative communication projects: A new bus station was opened in Kaunas, and to promote the station they decided to congratulate Vilnius on its birthday. During one Saturday, a few weeks ago, buses brought people from Vilnius to Kaunas for free, and there were special tours organized with gifts for visitors.

Another idea of theirs was about basketball. Lithuania is in love with basketball, and every city has its own team. The Kaunas mayor announced a challenge on Facebook for other cities’ mayors: the mayor of a winning team wears his team’s t-shirts for a whole month – so now he is wearing it at work!

Just to be clear – the mayor is not a youngster full of crazy ideas, it is just an example that institutions with tight and strict relationships can be creative if they want to. The necessity is not to be afraid to look funny, or even ridiculous. That’s the smart way to approach your future electorate!

Tell us about an upcoming PR campaign that excites you. 

Every year, we team up with LOGIN – one of biggest progress and innovation festivals in the region. This year they have plenty of changes in store and as their communication partners, we have a lot of wonderful challenges in store. It is definitely one of the most exciting campaigns we do every year – always different, always challenging and always exciting!

What is one of your most memorable PR campaigns?

I will never forget how viral the Open Doors Days that we made for the Crematorium in Lithuania was.

Also, we were behind an extremely successful social campaign for the Order of Malta in winter 2015, having several Lithuanian celebrities involved in spreading the information on social media sites and encouraging people to donate for lonely elderly people. It had a huge impact on the number of donations received that year and stood from all the other campaigns during that season – not to mention it made us feel great for taking part in such social action.

Questions or comments for the Ad verum team? Leave a comment below or find them on Facebook.