This week we're looking at how Web technology is being used in the Beijing Olympics. In today's post we check out how some of the world's leading brands are using social media tools in their Olympics campaigns. Our first post discussed how online video will be a big part of this Olympics, which is great for consumers. The Web can also be a boon for brands too, when it comes to major sporting events.
The inspiration for this post comes from Marion Arathoon of livemint.com, who wrote an excellent article outlining how brands such as Coca-Cola and McDonald's are deploying social media.
McDonald's has come out with an "alternate reality game" called The Lost Ring. The aim of the game is to discover a hidden history to the Olympics, which involves adventures in ancient Greece, mysterious packages, heroines, and so on. The Lost Ring apparently has the backing of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). There's an accompanying wiki and a YouTube site that has some very cinematic trailers, the first of which is embedded below:
It's an ambitious social media marketing ploy by McDonald's. While the McDonald's logo and brand aren't immediately apparent, the terms and conditions page indicates that it's a subtle push to associate their brand with the Olympics "spirit". Here's what the T&C state: "McDonald's is proud to sponsor The Lost Ring and bring the spirit of the Olympic Games to people around the world."
Another example of social media and the Olympics is from computer manufacturer Lenovo, which has created blogs for about 100 Olympics athletes. Entitled Voices of the Olympic Games, in this case there is an explicit connection between the site and the brand. All the participating athletes were provided with "new Ideapad laptops and video cameras to capture their experiences." Many of these blogs are hosted on Google's Blogger.
Here's an example, from Rachel Dawson of the USA Field Hockey Team, from her latest post Out and About in the Village. . .:
"...the village is thriving as new batches of athletes arrive daily. The chaos in the dining hall is a key indicator of the increase in athlete volume. In order to understand the capacity of the dining hall let me draw you a mental picture . . . combine 6 football fields (3 deep and 2 wide), then line the space with thousands upon thousands of tables, put in buffet style food stands and add one McDonalds café, and there you have the village dining hall. Needless to say, the dining hall is the prime location for socializing, culturizing, and simply people watching. Today, there was extra excitement at meal time as some big time athletes arrived - ehhh, maybe you have heard of Michael Phelps, or perhaps Roger Federer or how about Spanish tennis phenom, Rafael Nadal. Yes indeed, we saw all of them."
Did you spot the McDonald's mention? They are doing a great job already infiltrating the Olympics!
Via livemint.com, who got the following information from marketing consultancy R3 Asia Pacific, here are further examples:
Any major sporting event these days will attract big sponsors, and the Olympics has always been an event where global giants like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Kodak, et al can flaunt their wares. With social media, you could say that brands are just using the Internet to find ever more ingenious ways to promote their brand - and that the Olympics is just a prop for that. McDonald's clever alternate reality game is proof of that. Lenovo's 'blog for schwag' promotion for athletes is a more overt example.
Still, we think it's good usage of social media tools and it shows just how far the Web has come that big brands are pumping money into it as part of their Olympics marketing. What do you think of these social media marketing efforts? What others have you come across?
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4609
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
We're tweeting live results @BeijingOlympic
Posted by: Regan Cunliffe | August 6, 2008 3:02 AM
The 'accompanying' Wiki that you mention, was actually initiated by players of the game and is player-generated and player-hosted content. It is linked to from an ARG's main site, which I haven't personally seen happen in an ARG before. Good on them - certainly a good way to get new players up to speed and involved.
Also, you might be interested to know that currently, the NZ team are the front-runners for the gold medal at the Lost Sport, which is part of the Lost Ring ARG. The world-wide synchronised finals are on the day of the closing ceremony.
Posted by: jo | August 6, 2008 3:43 AM
The visit was useful. Content was really very informative. From http://www.ahmedabadonnet.com
Posted by: Gori Garg | August 6, 2008 5:14 AM
Hi Richard,
Thanks for mentioning the Lenovo campaign, I'm part of the Ogilvy team that worked on it and am here on the ground in Beijing. You might also be interested in a bit of a social experiment we just launched around our efforts which I wrote about on my blog: www.tinyurl.com/beijingexperiment
I'll be sure to check out the other sites you profiled here and I'm looking forward to sharing lots more content with you and online over the next few weeks!
Posted by: Rohit | August 6, 2008 6:42 AM
Hey - thanks for these!
Just on the ARG - the IOC approves it because McDs is one of the IOC's TOPs (Tier One Partners). As is Lenovo (until after this Games). In fact all the brands you mention are either partners of the IOC or BOCOG (the Beijing Organising committee) except the last two, Nike and Pepsi.
Posted by: dboy | August 6, 2008 8:56 AM
Excellent stuff! I'm doing posts for the various TOP for the Olympics and seeing what mediums they are using for their marketing efforts!
I've done Samsung
http://oldskoolmark.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/samsung-and-olympics-with-sports-20/
and Lenovo so far,
http://oldskoolmark.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/olympics-and-lenovo-with-sports-20/
Missed out on the Samsung torch relay video thingy, whats that all about?
Posted by: Mark Khoo | August 6, 2008 9:41 AM
Here is Sun Microsystems Facebook app for Olympics http://apps.facebook.com/mypicksbeijing/Home
Posted by: Joe Stanson | August 6, 2008 12:39 PM
I'm the admin of a FriendFeed Room (http://friendfeed.com/rooms/beijingolympics ) that has a pretty good conversation going. Plus I'll be putting all of my social media experiences while I'm at the Games into it. The room is public so anyone can join and contribute.
Chad Catacchio
Posted by: Chad Catacchio | August 6, 2008 5:11 PM
Don't forget to download Silverlight to access 3000 hours of on demand olympic highlights:
http://www.geldpress.com/2008/08/olympic-operation-silverlight/
Posted by: Arno | August 7, 2008 1:58 AM
Thanks for this.
it would be good also to analyze the negative impact of all protests about human rights.
Posted by: Bourbonnais Il | August 7, 2008 3:00 AM
Former Discovery Channel Producer/Director Siok Siok Tan is beta testing a new application on Facebook to promote her documentary about some of the everyday, but wonderfully extraordinary, peripheral people involved in the Games...She is selling the film, but it is to fund the Library Project which donates libraries and books to rural towns and orphanages: http://apps.new.facebook.com/boomtown_beijing/campaign_memberships/home
Posted by: OMBW | August 7, 2008 3:34 AM
I've been writing a series on my blog, Donna's Promo Talk, about what some of the top Olympic Game sponsors are doing this year with the Beijing Games. I've covered in depth posts on McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Kodak and NBC.
I'm interested to see how some of my blogger buddies will communicate with us from Beijing and how well we'll be able to get their updated posts. Kodak has really embraced the social media world and has sent their "Chief Blogger" to the games along with some others. And yes, I originally wrote about McDonald's Lost Ring Game back in April when I heard that world-renowned game designer, Jane McGonigal, developed it.
The marketing campaigns associated with each Olympics help to mark where we are in time. Just image what we'll be doing in less then two years from now at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games and even then the London 2012 Summer Games. Want to start making predictions?
Posted by: Donna DeClemente | August 7, 2008 6:28 PM
olympic fans social networking? visited a social network focus on olympic, http://www.olympic-network.net/
Posted by: andrew | August 7, 2008 9:09 PM
hey bud. great post! i'm here in beijing takin' in the olympics and makin' media. i'm posting the pics to my flickr (http://flickr.com/photos/kk) and the vids to my youtube (http://youtube.com/users/kriskrug). i've also been twittering a bunch (http://twitter.com/kk)
Posted by: kk+ | August 10, 2008 1:10 PM
With massive global events like the Olympics taking place around us, it is interesting to see how social interactions are taking place around it. The years of planning is a good way to gauge the impact of marketing in different stages of the hype curve.
The event itself is a culmination of hundreds of thousands of mini events that start with children locally to the best in every sporting field nationally, all the way through one of the the biggest events in sports. (Hence the media coverage and money it attracts when it arrives.)
Everyone's involved in the story because most of us participated in the excitement in some way or another. If the Olympic model of event marketing could be rehashed and extrapolated for a small business launch - the effect would be just as powerful within the scope of that market place.
I myself, am getting most of the updates from my twitter contacts onsite :) Great post.
Posted by: Amy John
|
August 15, 2008 7:59 AM