Track Superstar Usain Bolt Featured in Jamaica Ads

The fastest man in the world is now running around his home country of Jamaica, serving as the world’s fastest tour guide to showcase the country in a promotional campaign.

Usain Bolt, winner of three gold medals at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, will appear in a series of three, 30-second TV commercials to launch in February as part of Jamaica’s “Once You Go, You Know” campaign.

The commercials will air in key U.S. markets through the end of March, said John Lynch, director of tourism. The first commercial, titled “Stop,” shows Bolt running throughout Jamaica. However, he doesn’t make much progress: After every few sprints, he pauses to take in the view.

“Speed,” the second commercial, features Bolt running past a series of landscapes. As he speeds to a sprint, the song “One Love” speeds up with him. The third commercial, called “Pose,” features a series of everyday Jamaicans imitating Bolt’s “lightning bolt” pose, made famous after Bolt set records in Beijing and the 2009 World Championships in Berlin.

“We got lots of great footage all over the country in perfect weather,” Lynch said. “Right now the campaign is just planned for television, but it could be developed into a print campaign later on.”

The commercials were shot over a period of seven days in locations ranging from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios to Kingston “and everywhere in between,” Lynch said.

Lynch described Bolt as a “proud son of Jamaica.” “He was more than happy to show off his home to the world,” Lynch said. Bolt is from Sherwood Content in Trelawny, on Jamaica’s north coast. The Bolt ads are part of the winter campaign, which has a budget of $4.5 million and rolled out Jan. 4.

In addition to the Bolt ads, Jamaica will stage a presentation at the Port Authority in New York, as it did last winter. One wall in the bus terminal will display a Jamaican banner as well as other visuals depicting tourist scenes around the island. Tourism representatives will hand out brochures and souvenirs. Jamaica ads will appear in and on taxis in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington.

“We’re anticipating a pretty good winter season,” Lynch said. “We’ll have an increase over last winter. Our visitor numbers were down for the first six months of 2009, but we picked up after that, and the picture became more positive.”

Increased airlift and new hotels coming on line, including the first section of rooms at the Palmyra Resort & Spa at Rose Hall in Montego Bay this month, will boost Jamaica’s tourism product in the critical peak season, Lynch said.