The Olympics are something of a social-media conundrum. The Olympics– as an event — embody the spirit of community and multiculturalism better than anything else I know, and they’re already inspiring tons of activity across a range of social networks.
Yet the Olympics — as a brand — have a fairly anemic official social presence. The result is an interesting case study in community development and social brand management.
Alexandra Samuel argues that the games are practically tailor-made for social media. Yet most of her analysis is about the ways organizations that are tangential to the games — the host city, the local media — are using social technology. The closest she comes to actually discussing the games is in talking about social efforts by one of the projects of the Cultural Olympiad. She’s not writing about the Olympics as an organization so much as she is describing a cultural force.
I don’t mean to be too critical of the Olympics in this regard — it’s worth noting that they have some special challenges to overcome. Part of the issue is the partners the Olympics have in this undertaking, such as NBC and the host city of Vancouver. Many individual teams, athletes and other partners have their own social presences. There just can’t be a single voice here. There’s also the question of language and cultural barriers. Finally, there’s the fact that folks aren’t interested in talking about the Olympics in general — they want to talk about individual champions. Much of the discussion of Twitter today wasn’t about the Olympics directly, but about individual athletes such as Alexandre Bilodeau.
It’s a familiar story: We’ve got a well-known brand that lots of people are very passionate about, but organizational considerations make sure the brand’s social presence remains subdued. What breaks that logjam?
The answer, in part, might be something along the lines of publishing lists of Olympic athletes who tweet. For an event like the Olympics, fostering discussion around your brand might actually be preferable to having a top-down social presence. If the stories of the athletes are what get people talking, then playing to that strength may pay better dividends than striving for direct corporate engagement. The moral of the Olympics’ social-media story may be that playing to your organization’s strengths is a better bet than following some arbitrary playbook.
What do you think of the Olympics’ social presence? Is direct engagement always better than indirect? What are some other ways organizations can get around logistical hangups and find indirect ways to embrace social media?
Image credit, goldhafen, via iStock
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by sbosm: Faster, higher, Twitter: Social media and the #Olympic Games: http://ow.ly/17xBw...
Is it conscious choice by the organizers to stay out of the social media or they did not even think about participating in the social media? My guess is that the organizers did not think what and how the social media should be utilized for the events. I am sure by the next Olympics (Summer) the organizers would have to embrace a kind of social media and be active participants of it.
The Olympics actually does have a social media presence — it's just not very robust. I linked to their FB and Twitter pages in the article. Here they are again: ( http://twitter.com/olympics http://www.facebook.com/olympics) My point isn't that they're necessarily turning their back on social media — more that they're not able to create single, unified, engaging social platform for variety of reasons. The Olympics have some unusual challenges to face and so they're going to have to come up with some pretty unusual solutions.
[...] We have such a great chance to get an up and close perspective of the Olympics through the eyes of the Athletes. I hope we all take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about these games and the countries that are participating. The Social Olympics [...]
[...] We have such a great chance to get an up and close perspective of the Olympics through the eyes of the Athletes. I hope we all take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about these games and the countries that are participating. The Social Olympics [...]
Would we really want to engage with a unified Olympic voice? Personally, I doubt it. As stated in the article, this is about individual stories and maybe national ones. Even with an organizational presence by the IOC this is not who we want to engage in a dialog. It's a great experiment and there are thousands of voices to listen to and we all have the tools to do so. In that sense to me the Olympics are a social media success story already.
I love what the Olympic marketing staff is doing. I get updates faster on Twitter and Facebook before they hit the news media. I was tweeting about the luger the other day before the news was carrying it and it drove me to the site to read about his progress–so sad! I think they are doing a wonderful job and could be a best case scenario for social media.
I think part of the problem is that thanks to NBC's monopoly (in the U.S.) on Olympic coverage, it's not really a live event at all. The Men's Downhill was over and the medalists decided way before I could watch it on TV last night. If anything, I have to AVOID my Twitter/Facebook feeds at times if I want to be able to watch the competition without knowing in advance who the winner is.
The more interesting social media presence: the Twitter lists various outlets have compiled of actual athletes (like http://twitter.com/theprovince/lists/athletesvi…).
[...] blog, by Jesse Stanchak, “Faster, higher, Twitter: Social Media and the Olympic games,” analyzes the uses of social media in this years Olympics and some of the barriers that are [...]