Athletes and Brands that Made the Biggest Buzz during Rio

Adweek.com has recently presented the findings from Pixability and Omnicom Media Group Proprietary’s Olympic Survey, compiled earlier this month. With video analytics from Pixability, and social media impact measurements from OMG, it’s a brilliant insight into the ins and outs of media consumption throughout a worldwide event as influential as the Olympic games.

The analysis included sixteen worldwide Olympic sponsors, including Atos, Bridgestone, Coca Cola, Dow, GE, McDonald’s, Omega, P&G, Panasonic, Samsung, and Visa.  Non-sponsor brands that were analysed included Pepsi, TAG Heuer, Sony and American Express, among others.

This is where marketers and advertisers should be taking notes. If you know who did it right and how they did it – in arguably the world’s most popular global event – then you’ll be a far sight closer to getting it right yourself. As OMG’s Darrel Jursa stated; “It makes sense for marketers and advertisers to understand the existing drumbeat of discussion around an event like the Olympics, even if it has nothing to do with a brand.”

The eleven sponsors attracted 140 million views across their YouTube pages during the Olympics, more than doubling the amount they had before the games. The most talked about athlete (by a long shot) was 800m freestyle winner Katie Ledecky, followed by fellow swimmer Adam Peaty, 400m record-holder Wayde van Neikerk, and, of course, Michael Phelps.

‘Olympic culture’ dominated as the main topic of conversation throughout the games, maintaining a significant lead over related topics such as Olympic sports, Olympic issues, and Olympic sponsor brands. People aren’t focused on the sport as much as they’re focused on other social aspects of the games – which isn’t such a surprise when you consider the incredible plethora of cultures that are merging in one place.

The company who scored the top spot on the podium this year was Omega. They dominated the attention received on Facebook throughout the games, with a 28% share of Olympics-related interactions. This is particularly noteworthy considering brand giants Samsung and McDonald’s only managed to garner an 8% share rate each.

This year also brought the highest number of openly LGBT athletes competing in the games, which also meant the largest amount of mentions – around 245,600 of them, actually. Hashtags such as #LoveWins and #NoH8 were the main features of related posts.

Facebook has proved once again that it’s still the best place to put your money if you’re looking to attract an audience, with the highest number (24.6%) of followers using the platform before Twitter (13.1%) and YouTube (11%).

Have a look at Adweek’s complete infograph here for more: