Two golds at Baltic PR Awards

Communications agency A.W.Olsen & Partners is awarded with two grand prix in the biggest Baltic PR contest Baltic PR Awards. Campaign #pay (#nomaksāt), which was developed and implemented for the Ministry of Finance of the Public of Latvia, is awarded as the best “social campaign” and “public sector campaign”. Campaign video-case.                                   The challenge of the campaign was to increase discussions about paying taxes among young people, showing tax payment as a positive, necessary and honourable duty. Another important task was to explain how the budget gets replenished and how it gets allocated, as well as to explain what are the risks and manifestations of the shadow economy. The main audience were young people (13-25 year old). Many of them are not active taxes payers yet, but in the nearest time they will enter the market, so it is important to form their attitude and educate them before they face the dilemma of paying taxes. We decided to make the taxes payment practise stylish and to find opinion leaders, who could attract the attention of this audience and speak the language that is clear and attractive for it. So we have involved in the campaign the most popular in Latvia rap singers “Olas”, who wrote a song #pay (Latvian: #nomaksāt). These artists became the faces of the campaign. Their images appeared in the official page of the campaign, were used in advertising materials, as well as in the specially developed “taxes payer test”, that explained the manifestations and risks of the shadow economy and involved the target audience in the discussions about taxes payment topic. The campaign in a form of a song in a natural way became really popular and visible between the target audience. In a result of a campaign we say not only good communicational results: users of social media filled the “taxes payer test”, they quoted the song, published pictures of the outdoor advertisement and selfies in T-shirts with campaign logo. All the leading media informed about the messages of the campaign. In addition we saw another important results. In 2015, additional income of the state budget because of the activities that reduce shadow economy is about 75,4 million EUR. This is 5,6% more than in 2014. If in 2014 44% of Latvians said that not paying of taxes was acceptable, in 2015 the same answer was chosen by 36%. This year Baltic PR Awards received 119 campaigns from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland. “For us it is very important that our campaign is awarded not only in category “public sector campaigns”, but also in the category “social campaigns”, in which this year there was the biggest competition. We are grateful to the Ministry of Finance of the Public of Latvia for not being afraid of the brave solutions and letting us to implement all the ideas”, says Olga Kazaka, partner at A.W.Olsen & Partners.