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!

Given an increasingly large marketing delegation, an undercurrent of dissatisfaction from the creative community at large seemed to bubble under the surface of this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.  But creative folks should beware – it’s the marketers who are looking for solutions, and who are responsible mainly for marshaling the creative power around and in support of their brands.

2012 certainly seemed to be “the year of the CMO” at the Festival. The sharp rise in registered delegates - from 9,000 last year to 11,000 this year - was primarily due to the number of clients attending, including delegates from 92 big-name brands and 550 marketing organizations in total.  They had starring roles in seminars, forums and workshops, as well as made appearances in “fringe” events such as the McCannes Rendezvous “Cocktails & Conversations” session, and The CMO Club Roundtable.

Of course many of the usual culprits were there such as P&G, Unilever and Coke, but there were several new brands on the scene too, and of course many brands doing double duty – not just there to speak or see what’s new, but also there to market to the creative community (Google, Adobe, Getty Images, Facebook and Yahoo! to name a few).

In terms of seminars, many CMOs had starring roles: Visa, Coke, P&G, Unilever and Nike.  The Coke seminar with CMO Joe Tripodi (interview) was “blow away” good in every sense – content, creativity and delivery.  Same with the Unilever seminar starring CMO Keith Weed and SVP of Marketing Marc Mathieu.  In both cases, major announcements were made.  Coke announced the latest iteration of its program “The Beat of London 2012” for the Olympics.  

And Unilever launched its global Waterworks™ initiative with Facebook and PSI (Population Services International) as the world’s first open social graph, “using technology to create lasting change”.

There were forums and workshops geared for and starring senior marketers as well.  Dana Anderson of Kraft led a particularly good forum on “5 Sneaky Ways to Get Great Work” which was highly entertaining, and which featured work from a range of brands, including the “Angry Pilgrims” creative for Stove Top Stuffing. 

The workshop led by Brand Learning’s co-founders Mhairi McEwan and Andy Bird was also tailored to the marketing community and for agency folk wanting to better understand the marketing community.  Entitled “The Growth Drivers: Challenging the Way Marketers & Agencies Work Together”, it featured Kerris Bright, CMO of Ideal Standard International, Barry Herstein, recent CMO for Snapfish, and Amanda Mackenzie, CMO for Aviva.

Of the “fringe” events, my panel entitled “Cocktails & Conversations at Cannes”, which was part of the McCann Rendezvous, was especially enlightening in terms of the creative process as seen through the eyes of senior marketers.  Joining me were Wendy Clark of Coca-Cola, John Travis of Adobe, Maryam Banikarim of Gannett, and Michelle Klein for Smirnoff at Diageo.  And we got into a whole host of issues including ownership of creativity, getting the right balance between data and creativity, experimentation and learning, and internal politics.  Arun Sudhaman wrote an excellent re-cap on the session for The Holmes Report.

Another “fringe” event, The CMO Club’s CMO Roundtable, was kicked off by CMO Club CEO Pete Krainik and included senior marketers from Yahoo!, Sovereign/Santander Bank, Carlsberg, Ferrero, General Mills, Heineken, Google, Beiersdorf (Nivea), Philips and Unilever.  Hosted by EffectiveBrands and MOFILM, the conversation focused how to best leverage global brands, using frameworks, best practice sharing, story-telling and engaging in the conversation.

And marketing delegates were not confined to the upper echelon.  2012 was the second year for the Cannes Creative Academy for Young Marketers (under 30) for young marketers who want to learn about creativity, with Dean of the Academy, former global marketing officer for P&G Jim Stengel, who also earlier this year launched his book Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies.

So while creatives may not be overly enthusiastic about an increasing number of marketers flocking to the Cannes Lions, they should at least be appreciative that marketers are taking an increasing interest in creativity and how to encourage best-in-class creativity, and that they respect the Cannes Lions enough to support the Festival with truly amazing content, major announcements and thought-provoking conversations.

As Claire Beale, editor of the UK's Campaign magazine, said, "This is a serious, full-on business event that's a thoroughly justifiable way of spending a week out of the office and even a fairly justifiable way of spending several thousands of expense-account pounds [dollars].  It's perhaps not as much fun as it used to be, but then, what is?"