LONDON--Olympic sponsors that activated their social media strategies early continue to dominate the upper reaches of the London 2012 Social Scoreboard.

With six weeks to go until the Olympics opening ceremony, P&G continues to lead the London 2012 Social Scoreboard. The scoreboard uses Sociagility's PRINT methodology to determine how actively sponsors are engaging with customers via social media and networks. Data have been collected since April 18, 100 days out from the start of the Games.

By and large, those sponsors who activated through social media and implemented early have dominated the top of the rankings since April: P&G, Cadbury’s, BMW and Omega.

Similarly, those who lagged then mostly do so now. This may reflect a deliberate decision to eschew social media activation. Nevertheless, there are some surprising brand names at the bottom end of the scoreboard, including McDonalds and Visa.

 

There has been some significant jostling for position at the very top of the table, with Cadbury’s briefly challenging P&G for gold. The overall scores however disguise what appears to be a strategic divide among sponsors in terms of social activation. Some have dedicated social media presences for their Olympic involvement. Others have, deliberately or by default, incorporated their Olympic activity within their existing social media properties.

Both approaches have merit. New dedicated accounts are more likely to be relevant and encourage engagement (as Sociagility’s ‘potential’ metric shows) but will be more expensive and time-consuming. Existing profiles are obviously an easier, quicker and cheaper route but may limit engagement with Olympics-focused audiences.

P&G, so far, is a successful example of the dedicated approach, with their 'Thank You Mum' campaign platform a key part of their Olympic activation. Cadbury’s, following their early 'Spots vs. Stripes' campaign, is now, closer to the Olympics, integrating sponsorship activation within the broader brand presence.

Despite these different approaches, a head to head comparison of P&G with Cadbury’s shows that their scores for the five PRINT attributes (popularity, receptiveness, interaction, network reach and trust) are actually very similar – with the exception of interaction which suggests that P&G is better converting its participation to audience engagement.


 

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.