French tourism board Atout advertises French beach with photograph of Florida The high-profile "France, Come and Play" advertising blitz involved 23 different images, each of which paired what purported to be a photo of French region with an Olympics-themed slogan. Thus, a picture of a woman flicking her hair as she emerges from an azure is captioned "Backflip in Corsica." Another showing a family casually bicycling through flat countryside is captioned "Team Pursuit in Vendee." It was a London-based South African who recognised the beach used in one of the ads - for northern France - as being in the Cape Town suburb of Llandudno. The poster in question featured a family running across a beach together with the slogan: "Sprint Finish on the Northern France Coast." Photographer Bradford Bird said: "I grew up in Llandudno and so I recognised the beach as soon as I saw it. I thought 'that's a little bit cheeky' and put a picture of the billboard up on my Facebook page. Mr Bird's intervention caused other South Africans to examine the campaign. They quickly realised that another of the campaign's images - this time for the Mediterranean coastline - was also taken at the same Llandudno beach Alerted to their mistake, the French quickly replaced the advertisements. The updated versions have already been published in newspapers and on the campaign's official website www.gotofrancenow.com Unfortunately for them, however, even the beach in the replacement "northern France" advertisement is at least 4,500 miles away from where it should be. The picture of six young people running towards a setting sun over what is claimed to be a French coastline was in fact taken in Clearwater Beach, Florida. The photograph is available for sale from a website which specialises in providing generic "stock" photographs to the advertising and publishing industries. Entitled "multi ethnic friends running on the beach," it is available for advertising use for as little as £10 for a low-resolution image to £49 for the highest quality. Contacted via the iStockphoto.com website, the Florida-based photographer who took the picture, Johnny Hetfield, confirmed that he took it in America. "I shot this in the Tampa FL area beaches about 7-8 months ago [in] Clearwater Beach I believe," Mr Hetfield wrote. While Mr Hetfield's photograph is not marked as having been taken in America, the French authorities may have been expected to have enquired as to its origin - and not only because they got it wrong first time round. The new picture is part of a set of similar photos, all of which show a distinctly American-looking group of models playing under a bright sun on featureless sand. The advertisers' suspicions may also have been expected to be aroused by the fact that very little of northern France's rugged coastline faces west - the direction it would need to in order for the sun to set directly over the sea. The Atout France tourism marketing agency spent 716,000 euros (£598,000) on its "France, Come and Play" promotional blitz, which saw billboards plastered throughout the London Underground for three weeks from March 5 this year. The organisation's managing director Christian Mantei said that he planned to pay for another three week poster blitz to run during the Olympic Games themselves. He also said that the images will be used in 23 expensive newspaper advertorials and to use newsletters, online social networks and on the dedicated website www.gotofrancenow.com. While the beaches of Normandy and Brittany are undoubtedly beautiful, they are perhaps less exotic looking than the South African and American beaches the French chose to represent them. Named after the North Wales town, the South African Llandudno is famed locally for its spectacular white sand beach and impressive surf. Clearwater Beach is a 2.5 mile long stretch of sand on Florida's western Gulf coast, an area the region's tourism bodies describe a "a subtropical tourist haven." Steve Turton is the managing director of The Line Agency, the British advertising agency which produced the "France, Come and Play" campaign. Having previously apologised for the initial slip-up - which he blamed on faulty picture search methods - Mr Turton claimed that the replacement ad was just a "temporary measure." Told that he was now using an image of an American beach he said: "Thank you for pointing this out, the picture was actually only being used as temporary measure while we sourced a real one from Brittany. This has now been provided and will be used for the remainder of the campaign Atout France's press spokeswoman Fanny Moutel did not reply to a enquiry made last week about the replacement photo's origin.