Ad campaign for London Games bid

London is competing with nine other cities

An advertising campaign has been launched which hopes to build support for London's bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games.

Images of athletes hurdling and jumping over landmarks like Tower Bridge and the London Eye will be used alongside the slogan 'Leap for London'.

They will appear on TV and radio and 15 large vans will also carry posters.

About 39,000 leaflets will be handed out in Lower Lea Valley in east London, the proposed site for the Games.

The launch coincides with the deadline for the nine bidding cities to hand in a detailed questionnaire to the International Olympic Committee on how they hope to stage the Games.

The London 2012 chief executive Keith Mills said: "We need the help, support and enthusiasm of everyone in the UK.

A group of Waltham Forest schoolchildren support the bid

"We need them to make a leap of faith, a leap of the imagination and a leap of inspiration.

"We need them to make a Leap for London."

The aim is to focus on the benefits that the Games could bring to local communities, in sport, business, jobs and in tourism.

Other slogans in the campaign, devised by advertising gurus M & C Saatchi, include "it will be a giant leap for the regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley" and "it will be an enormous leap for the pride of this nation".

This month the images will feature on giant posters at London's Kings Cross, Tower Bridge Approach, Mansell Street, Bishopsgate and City Gateway.

Large posters will be driven around the city for five days on 15 ad-vans.

Another 1,350 A3 posters are being put up in doctors' surgeries, schools, sports centres and libraries.