Fastest mouth in the world promotes public transit If you’re going to promote busses for mass transit, "speed" might not be the word that pops into mind. After all, the 1994 thriller "Speed" graphically told of any bus riders’ nightmare: bombs aboard a bus would explode if the vehicle slowed to less than 50 miles per hour unless cop Keanu Reeves could save the day.

But speed is exactly what the head of the Greater Richmond Transit Co. wants. President and Creative Director Bill Chapman decided that the GRTC’s new ad campaign will be a brisk "Get Carried Away." The campaign will focus on the numerous places the GRTC buses can take riders. To help, Chapman enlisted the help of Steve Woodmore, an Englishman who is the "world’s fastest talking human" according to the Guinness Book of World Records. "We thought it would be funny and effective to jam as many locations into the spots as possible," says Chapman, an award-winning radio ad producer and writer. "Once we found him, and he agreed to do the ads, everything fell into place."

With the fastest talking man alive as the star, no one worried about production for the campaign falling behind schedule. The ad spots feature Woodmore being prodded into naming every place the GRTC buses can take riders. Richmond actress Katie McCall plays the announcer who coaxes Woodmore into the challenge. She laid down her track in Richmond’s In Your Ear studio. Woodmore then recorded his line from a link-up from London. "He sounded perfectly normal," Chapman says, "and then we started recording."

Woodmore has been clocked speaking between 350 and 450 words per minute. His part in the spots involved saying around 725 words in under two minutes. The sudden change of pace from a normal rate of speaking to his record-breaking talents of oration was a hoot, albeit a quick one. "I was afraid we’d run out of copy," says Associate Creative Director Elizabeth Hahn. "But it was just enough."

And so the reigning king of rapid rhetoric did his job for GRTC and did it well. Assuming the transit company doesn’t employ bus drivers of the same speedy nature, this should be a successful campaign.