RIGA – A few weeks ago, city fathers launched an advertising campaign to help put Latvia’s capital on the map. It was not aimed at improving education, or advocating another cause that would improve the quality of life for 900,000 people who live here.
Around 100 ubiquitous posters feature large white letters that read, Vote for Riga, or Balso par Rigu. The ad encourages residents to vote online for their city to become a square on the international edition of the Monopoly board game.
“Our purpose was to support the campaign to get the word RIGA on the new Monopoly game so that our city would be recognized in the world,” a city official said.
As a native of this great town, I’d be delighted to see my city become part of the Monopoly’s international edition. It’d be an honor. I doubt though many people visited Baltic Avenue, or Boardwalk simply because they represent squares on the traditional Monopoly board game. No guarantee that people would want to visit Riga simply because they played the Monopoly game.
Besides, spending taxpayers money on an advertising campaign that ultimately helps Hasbro sell more board games is a wasteful use of public resources.
Getting Riga on the Monopoly board may bring more tourists here, who are curious about this mysterious obscure place on the sea they’ve never heard of. They’d naturally want to visit and spend their hard-earned money here. And that is good.
But the campaign is all for an easy solution to a complicated problem. Long-term solution is to invest in developing a certain skill we are good at. It would mean spending more than half per cent of GDP on research and development, for example. It would mean finding out our skills and honing them in.
Public relations campaigns didn’t put smaller country like Estonia on the map, though they helped. It was creation of companies like Skype. Or first-ever electronic national parliamentary elections. Or standing up to Russia.
Riga’s placement on the monopoly board could bring some tourists in, but it won’t create a name for this small country struggling with its self-esteem.
The city spent 700 lats ($1,300), which seems like a pathetically small sum of money for the advertising campaign. Yet, the money should have been spent on developing industries, and honing skills and talents of people who would have voted for this town. Even if only in the Monopoly game.
