The Countdown to the London Summer Olympics Continues
July 25, 2012
By Guest Blogger Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk
At the start of this post this morning the official countdown app on Facebook says it's now 1 day, 16 hours nd 0 minutes exactly to the Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London. I was watching the Today Show earlier this week and Meredith Viera is back to help Matt Lauer out in covering the Games for NBC, the Official Broadcaster. The new Today Show co-host, Savannah Guthrie, will also be joining them. Since this is Savannah's first Olympics they had recorded a bunch of video clips from a variety of Olympic athletes giving her advice of how she should enjoy the Games. If we could all be so lucky!
As I mentioned in last week's post I wrote about the upcoming games, I just finally purchased an iPad so that I could fully partake in the two-screen viewing of the Games. After I wrote the post I read this MediaPost article about a survey conducted by Harris Interactive that found that 35% of U.S tablet owners will use their devices to get Olympics coverage, while 27% of smartphone users will do the same. A total of 4 in 10 of those who plan to follow the Olympic will do so on two or more devices.
When I opened up the Apple Store on my iPad the first app recommendation was the NBC's Olympics Live Extra app which I have now downloaded and ready to begin using (they also have a Driod version). This app allows you to watch the Games Live for free along with a bunch of "extras". So I'm set for now. This year is the first time all 302 Olympic events in 32 sports will be streamed live.
The Olympic Sponsors have been rolling out their marketing campaigns. I first wrote about Visa's Global Cheer Olympic Campaign and then in last week's post about Coca-Cola's Move to the Beat App. Procter and Gamble is also another sponsor that has develop quite a marketing blitz around the Games. They have chosen YouTube to feature their two-minute Best Job | P&G London 2012 Olympic Games Film film that thanks "Moms". It now has way over 5 million views and has probably caused just as many tearful eyes.
Twitter of course will be a big part of this Socialympics, as they have been called. Here's a few of the Official pages you can follow @Olympics, @USOlympicTeam, @IOCMedia (Official Olympic News) and London 2012. You can also check out IOC’s Twitter Lists, including Olympians Twitter list and automated results for all sports at the Olympics.
A group of American graduates from MIT and a British professor, Mike Thelwall, have been tracking all UK-based Olympic-related tweets for the last couple of months. They were commissioned to develop an algorithm to track the sentiment of British tweeters about the Olympics by EDF Energy, the official electricity supplier to London 2012, in order to create the ‘world’s first social media driven light show’, called ‘Energy of the Nation’ on the London Eye. Every evening at 9pm London time leading up to and during the Olympics there is a 30 minute light show projected onto the London Eye, a giant Ferris wheel on the banks of the River Thames. The colors of the lights will be dictated in real time by the mood of the people tweeting about the Olympics. You can see how it works and track it here on EDF Energy's site.
I'm excited to watch the games. How about you? Only 1 day, 14 hours left now!
Thanks Jessica. Only 6 hours and 57 minutes left now. Let the Games begin!
Donna
Posted by: Donna | July 27, 2012 at 09:07 AM
Love your post Donna, I would be buying an ipad for me this morning just to get involved in olympics, at the time I am submitting my comment here it is about 20 hours and 40 minutes left before the opening ceremony's bell ring.
Posted by: Jessica | July 27, 2012 at 03:26 AM