Social media sites and the Olympic sponsors

Olympics have entered in to the new era of social media from last 4 years. In 2008, Olympics have shown their existence on the social media sites with limited fan base and users. However in 2012, Facebook has promised about 900 million users to the Olympic Games. Twitter, on the other hand has promised about 140 million users. Certainly, there is enormous increase in fan base since Beijing Olympics.

With the enlightenment of Olympic torch in London, social media sites have also tighten their strategies. They have not only started posting day to day activities in their Olympic event page but also started maintaining track of sponsor activities.

Social Agility is a UK based social media consulting company, cofounded by Tony Burgees-Webb. They have formulated a leader board for this summer games. This leader board is devised to keep tracks and ranks of the Olympic sponsors and tell how effectively they have used social media platform during the gaming event. Mr. Burgess-Webb explained that they have maintained more than fifty metrics for calculating the scores of the posts and updates. They are evaluating and continuously updating their score boards. They have been performing this job from last three months. Their continuous efforts have ranked three top companies on the top of the medal table. These are Coca cola, British airways and Adidas.

Mr. Burgess-Webb has said that many brands have expense out billions of dollars to get legal sponsorship of the event. Therefore, they all are striving hard to activate their sponsorship and excel from the competing sponsors.   

The mechanism, on which Social Agility Firm is working, is explained by the cofounder. He said brands that have shown their active participation on Facebook and Twitter gain points for creating their specific pages for the Olympic event. These brands are ranked and evaluated in comparison of each other. Any brand that has scored less than 100 is considered to be at border line. This is an ultimatum for the brand to revise their social media strategy.

Brands like Procter and Gamble has secured their position in the top 10 ranking because they have started early posting and secured Gold Medal. Alternatively, Adecco is managed to get only 15 score at the score board. Adecco is the least ranking company on the score board of the social media site. This mean they have to revise their strategy. They just have posted one feed from 21^st June, thus they are not reaping benefit from Olympic Games sponsorship.

Coca Cola Company, on the other hand have secured 298 score. They are the top performers on the social media score board. Their effective social media strategy has made them top star of the event. Mr. Burgess-Webb explains that brands who are engaging their fans on social media sites are basically earning competitive edge than the brands that are not doing anything. Companies surely have to use viral campaigns through social media sites to retain their sponsorship with the event. Only by doing this, they will turn their fortune and reap high ROI.

Similarly General Electric has created Facebook application entitled as “workout like an Olympian”. GE management explained that they have used social game for endorsing their brand. This act really matters to them.

Even Olympic strict social media policies are supporting their sponsors to reap enormous benefit from the world’s famous gaming event. This policy says that no athlete can endorse the unsponsored brands. Athletes are only allowed to post feeds and Tweets about the sponsor brands. This gives a competitive edge to the highly active brands and gives huge exposure in the athlete’s fans.

This advantage has reaped by Adidas. Adidas is the official brand of Olympics; therefore Nike’s campaign on Olympics is challenged in court. It gives an edge to the Adidas for its 62 million dollars sponsorship. Nike has to change their Make it Count campaign on social media sites to the Find your greatness campaign on the YouTube.