Some 93% of the residents of Vilnius, Lithuania, when surveyed, say they love living in this Northern European city (with a population of 500,000, Vilnius is of a similar scale to other famously nice places like Oslo and Copenhagen).

Consistently ranked highly in terms of quality of life and attractiveness to tourists, Vilnius oozes Old World charm and brims with modern “right-sized city” amenities.

But how to get the message out, when people don’t even realise they should care about Vilnius, or have never heard of it?

How to start a conversation?

What clever way could we declare “Vilnius exists!” to as wide an audience as possible?

Thrilling Cities’ idea was to piggyback on an existing trend, and do a judo move to make the trend serve the city.

The trend involved 1) the rising popularity of the sport of street gymnastics, and 2) the YouTube success of some Vilnius-born athletes who are champions and pioneers of this sport.

With the help of these athletes and their jaw-dropping performances, we filmed an superlative new video engineered to be viral and “shareable” — and which goes out of its way to exhibit the city of Vilnius, with all of its special character, as a featured backdrop.

Anybody watching the video discovers Vilnius while being treated to an entertaining and inspiring athletic spectacle, which in its integration of art and life — a trademark spirit of Vilnius — carries a strong Vilnius vibe.