My UK business partner, Sociagility, published its report on the London 2012 'Socialympics' last week, which makes for some great reading - not least because it was based on 43,500 data points!

What's interesting to note is the ebb and flow, the ups and downs, of the 25 Olympic sponsor brands that were tracked for 145 days across four social networks and five dimensions of social media performance.  

Some brands like P&G, BMW, Cadbury and Cisco, benefitted from an early start, while others like adidas, British Airways, Coke, EDF and Visa, concentrated their efforts later on when Olympics fever was at a peak.  By contrast, a significant number of brands did not appear to engage with social media at all, or only sporadically - which is, in this day and age, pretty unbelievable to me!

Interestingly, some social media activation was undertaken in isolation or seemingly as an afterthought, or merely as an amplifier for advertising campaigns.  I've long been a proponent of integration so I found it surprising that some campaigns didn't have social fully integrated.

Promising smaller brands outperformed larger ones in the rankings by adopting what appeared to be a more proactive policy of engaging in real social dialogue, thus underlining the need for two-way communication.  The brands that led the Sociagility PRINT™ rankings were those that used social media to focus on engagement - not just brand awareness.

A quick visualization of the change in rankings is below, but you can download the full report here.

If you'd like more information, just let me know.

When tonight's Opening Ceremony kicks off for the 2012 London Olympic Games, all eyes will be on what has been hailed in the lead-up as “the digital Olympics” or “the world’s first social Games”.  And while so much will be captured during the Games themselves, the social revolution around the Games began weeks if not months ago for both athletes and sponsors.

The 25 main global and local sponsors have paid dearly for their official rights.  Estimates of up to $1.6 billion have been reported.  But of course sponsorship rights are just part of the cost.  Much more is spent on marketing activity to maximize sponsors’ involvement and support.

Advertising Age recently reported on some of the more significant campaigns, and some of these sponsors also highlighted their Olympic programs when their CMOs spoke at last month’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.  Coca-Cola’s Joe Tripodi showcased the brand’s “Move to the Beat” effort aimed at teens globally.  Visa’s Antonio Lucio spoke about his brand featuring triumphant moments in Olympic history – and Olympic Gold Medal Winner Nadia Comaneci joined his seminar on the main stage.  And P&G’s Marc Pritchard presented his brand’s “Proud Sponsor of Mom” campaign, complete with “mommymetries” aka short documentaries about mom, or mum in some parts of the world.

Other brands championing major Olympic programs include McDonald’s with its “Champions of Play” campaign, GE with its Healthy Share app on Facebook, and Samsung with its US Olympic Genome Project.

All of these campaigns kicked in long before tonight's Opening Ceremony.  UK social media consultancy Sociagility started tracking Olympic sponsors' social media profiles 100 days ago.  At first, P&G led by a long shot, followed by BMW and Cadbury in the silver and bronze positions respectively.  But last week's scorecard shows Coca-Cola winning gold, followed by British Airways and adidas.  P&G had dropped down to 8th position followed by BMW as a top performer.

With such a dynamic shift on the social Olympic leader board, it will be interesting to see further movement during the Games.  It may be that brands like Coke and adidas have more affinity with the Olympics versus newer sponsors like P&G, Cadbury and BMW. 

Only time will tell.  There certainly is no shortage of activity in the main social channels, and much of the conversation is likely to be around the Olympics during the Games.  In his article “Why Social Media Will Reshape the 2012 Olympics,” Mashable’s Sam Laird recently documented social’s growth since the last Olympics, from 6 million registered Twitter users to 500 million since 2008; and from 100 million Facebook users to more than 900 million in the same time frame.  Worth checking out the Infographic he also posted on “How Mobile, Social Will Win the 2012 Olympics” sourced from Nielsen, eMarketer and Forrester.

And fresh out today from AllTwitter is a new infographic on "The Socialympics and the Twitter Games" which claims that with the BBC expecting 1 terabit per second of traffic, the Olympics are set to strain the UK's internet infrastructure.

Let the social games begin!