[Infographic] Coca Cola Takes Home The Gold Medal on Social Media

The Olympics and the Olympic sponsors received a hard time due to a perceived heavy handedness when it came to what the athletes could tweet about and even what credit card you could use at Olympic venues. Did this negativity affect the Olympic Worldwide Sponsors? In a word, no. The Worldwide Olympic sponsors grew, engaged, tweeted and got their social game on like never before.

This infographic shows how the Olympic Worldwide Sponsors got social in the run up to the mega event.

High Jump

This wasn’t a one horse race though. Sure, Coca-Cola dominates the field when it comes to sheer number of fans, but that is just one event that we looked at. When it came to fan growth, Visa lead the pack with an 83% growth in the first five months of the year. P&G took the silver while General Electric claimed the Bronze. Atos, more commonly known in enterprise IT circles than being a household name, struggled to capitalize on their Olympic Sponsorship. They managed to grow their fanbase by just 1% in 5 months.

Shooting

Shooting and archery are two sports that need a steady hand and above all, accuracy. Many brands appeared to be remarkably reticent when it came to posting content on Facebook and Twitter. Notably, Dow Chemicals and Atos, two B2B companies, did not seem to be using social media to fully leverage their role as Olympic Worldwide Sponsors. P&G, being the self styled sponsor of Moms, posted the most often on Facebook, while Coca-Cola was the only sponsors fully leveraging Twitter to engage with the community.

Archery

When it came to engaging fans on Facebook, Omega proved that the accuracy of their content was better than all others. They posted just 21 times in 5 months, but it was all right on target with an engagement score of 80. McDonald’s engaged fans well with a score of 63, while General Electric was a surprise bronze medalist with an engagement score of 55. Considering they were up against more desirable and consumer focused brands like Coca-Cola, Acer and Panasonic, General Electric were definitely punching above their weight in this event.

Hammer Throw

Average Reply Time (ART) on Twitter reveals how long it takes for brands to respond to tweets addressed to them. McDonald’s was able to respond in an average of 10 minutes, winning them the gold medal. Dow was the unexpected Silver medalist in this event, replying to tweets in around 18 minutes – however the volume of tweets they replied to was a lot less than others like Coca-Cola. Given their consumer focus, we expected Samsung UK, Acer and Panasonic to all reply to tweets faster than they did. Panasonic made followers wait almost 2 days for a reply, which is probably something that frustrates rather than helps customers.

Pentathlon

The Pentathlon is one of the most demanding events in the Olympics where the athlete must run, swim, fight and ride a horse to beat the competition. Similarly, the Unmetric Score factors in numerous metrics to determine an overall score which rates the performance of brands on social networks. It came as no surprise that the brands that focus on social media and have a global consumer presence, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Visa, were all medalists in this event. Interestingly, Panasonic and Acer appear to have underperformed on social media compared to the other sponsors.

The Medals Table

The Olympic Worldwide Sponsors were awarded Gold, Silver and Bronze depending on their top three finish in each of the events above. Coca-Cola is the undisputed reigning champion of social media with a total of four gold medals and one bronze. There were three sponsors who claimed a gold medal, but McDonald’s took second place thanks to their four silver medals. Visa took third position by taking home three bronze medals.

P&G put in a fine performance, winning two silver medals, although they could probably have done better being such a big global brand. Atos, the enterprise IT company, wasn’t able to capitalize on their sponsorship status on social media and failed to take home any medals.

Methodology

The Unmetric platform was used to gather the data. Data was taken between January and May 2012. The Engagement Scores are calculated based on the number of Likes, Comments, Shares and Impressions a post receives. The Unmetric Score is a scientific blend of 24 quantitative and qualitative measurements, weighted and balanced to produce a single unifying score that accurately represents the social media efforts of big brands around the world.

All data has been compiled and analyzed from the Unmetric application which tracks dozens of metrics to enable brands to benchmark themselves against competitors and their industry sector. Gain access to all this data by claiming a 10 day free trial.

Infographic Usage

You are free to reproduce the infographic in its entirety provided that full credit remains with Unmetric, the Unmetric logo and methodology is included and the work is fully attributed to Unmetric.