Social Media Is the Message for Olympics

At the Olympic Games in London, set to begin this month, the official motto of “swifter, higher, stronger” will be supplemented by a new label. If some marketers, fans and athletes have anything to say, these Games will be the first Social Media Olympics — the “Socialympics,” as some are calling them.

Even the Olympic movement, which sometimes steps into the future with great caution, has warily accepted the idea. As befits an event surrounded by superlative athletic, logistical and marketing feats, there is a bit of exaggeration in this description. The biggest social media platforms have been around for several previous Olympics, including the Beijing Summer Games of 2008 and the Vancouver Winter Games of 2010. Twitter was founded in 2006, YouTube in 2005 and Facebook in 2004. Broadly defined, social media go back even further: Blogging dates at least to the 1990s. But every Olympics needs a story line, preferably a “first.” Thus, the Athens Games of 2004 took the Olympic movement back to its ancient home. The Beijing Games carried the torch to a large, previously untapped market. In Britain, a midsize country that has been host to the Games before and where people’s enthusiasm for the event appears to be lukewarm, there is a new narrative. In the four years since the Beijing Games, use of social media platforms has surged.