Only 50% of ads shown globally during Olympic opening ceremony made digital reference
Only half of the advertisements shown globally during the Olympic opening ceremony made reference to the digital world, while three of the 11 sponsoring brands didn’t advertise at all, a study by A.T. Kearney found.
The study analysed primetime television advertising content during the 2012 Opening Ceremonies across six continents, capturing 246 television spots placed by 140 brands across eight countries.
The countries which were surveyed as part of the campaign were: India, Mumbai; UK, London; Russia, Moscow; Poland, Warsaw; USA, New York; Brazil, Sao Paulo; South Africa, Johannesburg; and Australia, Sydney.
Only the USA saw ads from all seven of its participating sponsors.
It was found that of the 50 per cent which did make a digital reference, four fifths of these just included a link to the brand’s website, while Visa Gold did include Facebook and Twitter references.
Jim Singer, study sponsor and a partner in A.T. Kearney’s Consumer and Retail Industries Practice, said: “For an event that was billed as the ‘Twitter Olympics,’ it was populated by a set of sponsors that rarely left the purview of conventional marketing and barely dipped into social media. Advertising by these mega-brands seems to be sticking to an analogue go-to-market mind-set in an increasingly digital-community minded world.”
It was discovered that big-name sponsors Coca-Cola and McDonalds made almost no digital references – only the McDonald’s ad in Poland directed users towards a site featuring Olympic promotional merchandise, while only two Russian Coca-Cola ads made reference to the brand’s Olympic-themed website.