An event called Socialympics happening in London this morning has already caused a wave of new responses regarding the importance of social media within Olympic Games. The main speakers in today's panel consist of a former Olympic athlete Chris Tomlinson, Gordon Lott the head of sponsorship at the official London 2012 partner LLoyds TSB, Chief sports reporter of the Daily Telegraph Paul Kelso, Hugh Chambers the Chief Commercial Officer of the British Olympic Associated and finally Alex Miller CEO of Engine’s social agency Jam.
We are interested in firstly, the influences of each of the panellists in terms of their relationship with the IOC and LOCOG and 2) what authority do they have to speak about the use of social media in this particular way?
It seems apparent that they all have a certain invested relationships in the contribution and overall success of the outlook of the 2012 games. All involved are making themselves experts on the Olympics, which they clearly are from the nature of their job titles, but what does this say about the audiences and the alternative messages of the games. For example, Carsten Thode (@SynergyCarsten) the director of consulting at Synergy, who are highly influential in the Olympic Games marketing, suggested that in the Athens Olympics in 2004, there was no use of social media during this time – despite web 2.0 being on the rise during this time.
From tracking the tag ‘socialympics’ on Twitter using @mhawksey‘s archive spreadsheet and it’s becoming more apparent that their invested interest is the only reason they’re pushing the Socialympics and generating hype on Twitter. Each individual represents a brand or a PR company who will positively benefit from the games so should we really listen to these representatives or are simply telling us what they want to tell us.
What do you think? Have you been involved in the hash tag frenzy? Tweet us @olympicsponsor or leave us a comment and we’ll get back to you.
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