Olympic sponsorship paying off for Coke, backfiring on McDonald’s: Mediacom

Mediacom and Brand Watch’s effort to measure the effectiveness of Olympics sponsors via Twitter finds Coca-Cola leading the social media popularity rankings, while McDonald’s trails at the bottom.

The MediaCom Sport Olympics tracker consolidates all social media mentions of the 25 Olympic sponsors that take place on Twitter, and for the purposes of this analysis focuses on those from the UK.

The Olympics tracker calculates a performance score for each brand, forming a ranking to indicate which brand is getting the best social media response to its Olympics sponsorship. The score is affected by the positivity or negativity of the comments, the reach and the engagement.

The 2012 Olympics has been described as the most social Olympics with the chatter on Twitter so voluminous that the International Olympic Committee has requested that fans tone it down, as it was affecting TV coverage.

Besides the sports, fans have also been actively discussing the brands sponsoring the event. The increased chatter has been ideal for some, less so for others.

Coca-Cola surged to the top of the rankings last week as its sponsorship of the Torch Relay paid off with a high level of positive comment, said Marcus John, Global Head of Mediacom Sport.

“The Torch Relay attracted huge attention as it toured the streets of London, from which Coke received significant mentions, culminating in a high-profile concert in Hyde Park, presented by Coca-Cola, the night before the opening ceremony,” he said.