LONDON--With five weeks to go until the opening ceremony, there have been some interesting daily changes over the past week near the top of Sociagility’s London 2012 Social Scoreboard rankings.
 
P&G continues to claim top spot while Cadbury has consolidated its 2nd place position. But BMW, BP and British Airways now rank 3rd, 4th and 5th respectively, displacing Omega (which has dropped down to 9th), while Cisco has improved over the week to take the number 6 slot.
 
While overall positions amongst the top 10 continue to shift, the Status and Potential scores can often be more revealing.
 
Status reflects the PRINT methodology’s measures of size and strength (ie awareness) while Potential amalgamates those more focused on listening and interaction (ie engagement). Brand size, heritage and marketing spend may well confer advantage on the Status scale, but only a deliberate engagement strategy generally accounts for high Potential scores.
 
A head-to-head comparison makes this clear. Compare, for example, British Airways (5th overall with a PRINT Index of 176) with Thomas Cook (7th with 145). Both are in the travel business but their Olympics activation approaches seem different. BA, with its huge reach and marketing spend (its new Home Advantage advertising campaign launched just this week) scores 3rd on Status, compared to a relatively lowly 14th spot for Thomas Cook. By contrast, Thomas Cook outperforms massively on the Potential scale, scoring 4th highest this week, while BA lags in 10th.

 

Do these results arise because British Airways is using its existing social media presence whil Thomas Cook has chosen to create dedicated channels for its sponsorship? Perhaps, but it’s worth pointing out that BA has only just activated its Facebook and Twitter channels with a vengeance, so it will be watched with interest to see if its Potential score increases through greater engagement.
 
By contrast, the approach from a more budget-constrained Thomas Cook has perhaps provided an opportunity for more scope for relevance and focused engagement around the games, borne out by its higher Receptiveness and Interaction PRINT™ scores. That said, it has not yet created a dedicated YouTube channel for its sponsorship. Is this just a matter of timing or an opportunity still to be explored? 
 
The London 2012 Social Scoreboard tracks all the main London 2012 Olympics sponsors’ social media performance on a daily basis. See http://www.sociagility.com/olympics/about for more information about how the scores have been calculated.