- Brand - Virgin Media
- Spot - Usain Bolt – Be The Fastest
- Music Title - Be The Fastest
- Artist - Arch Birds Feat. Vanessa Haynes
- Master Rights - Arch Birds
- Composer - Hill, Webb
- Publisher - Copyright Control
- Music Supervisor - The Most Radicalist Black Sheep Music
- Ad Agency - BBH
- Creatives - Nick Gill, Davud Karbassioun
- Film Co - Academy Films
- Director - Seb Edwards
- Post Production - The Electric Theatre Collective
- Air Date - 12/8/16
The 2016 Olympics may be over, but that hasn’t prevented broadband provider Virgin Media from building on the legacy of its eye-popping Usain Bolt – Be The Fastest spot by underwriting a full-length single release … in a true Jamaican dancehall style.
Agency BBH and its in-house supervision team The Most Radicalist Black Sheep Music invited unsigned South London duo Arch Birds “to write something absolutely pumping” for the screen campaign, according to band member Chris Hill.
The original execution ran in advance of the Rio Games and provided an exhilarating depiction of Bolt’s 9.58 second world 100 metre record, voiced by fellow sprinter Michael Johnson.
But it was after fielding an exceptional number of enquiries regarding the electronic score that BBH and Virgin Media suggested Hill and partner Brad Webb – who have been writing and performing together in one guise or another for over eight years – should expand the piece for public consumption.
“We were given a lot of freedom,” Hill continues. “But since they had so much cool footage of Bolt working out with a dance troupe in Kingston, it was obvious that our new Be The Fastest song should match those visuals.”