
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.
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.

Let the social games begin!