By Cream Editorial

Brands are spending a lot of money on advertising and social media throughout the Olympics, and with good reason. The shift in the way that people use social media since the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing has been monumental. Social media has become a part of everyday life for many people so it makes sense for brands to use it to their advantage.

Over the past four years the number of social media users has dramatically increased, Facebook has gone from 100mto almost 1bn users, and Twitter registrations have shot from 6m to 500m.

The number of people using social media isn’t the only thing that’s changed, coverage of the games itself and the way people want to view events like the Olympics has undergone a significant shift. This infographic from The Wall (below) is a great illustration of how social media has overtaken print and television as the most popular way to keep afloat of the games.

Twitter has become an integral part of the Olympics coverage. The BBC has shown athlete’s tweets across its broadcasts and on the BBC’s Olympic homepage. This demonstrates how important Twitter has become, in the UK it has become completely normal to see Twitter feeds on websites or television programmes or to be given a hashtag to use while watching TV.

The Olympics Hub provides an easy way to follow your favourite athletes and the games in general.  The hub allows users to sign up via Facebook or Twitter and shows visitors the top followed athletes for featured athletes for each day. The search facility filters queries by athlete, event, sport or discipline ensuring users find exactly what they’re after.

The official Olympic sponsors have been making the most of these changes and it seems to be paying off.

McDonalds is the most associated brand with the games. In the run up to the Olympics from January to July McDonalds was mentioned 90,911 times in conversations about the Olympics.

Samsung, with the help of Olympic Ambassador David Beckham, has also generated over 1,000 tweets about David Beckham and 22,519 general tweets and 15,210 blog posts mentioned the brand in association with the Olympics.

Coca-Cola has also been pulling out all the stops with its advertising in the months leading up to the games. Having been associated with the Olympics for 83 years Coca-Cola has launched its biggest ever Olympics advertising campaign for 2012. ‘Move to the Beat’ enlisted the help of Mark Ronson to create an original track for the campaign and he produced ‘Anywhere in the World’, sung by Katy B, to represent the individuals and sports involved in the Olympics. This campaign helped to ensure that Coca-Cola was one of the most recognised brands associated with the Olympics, 60,271 Twitter users also shared the image of the Olympic inspired Coca-Cola cans. 

Infographic via The Wall.

Can't get enough of the Olympics? Check out Cream's database of sports related case studies here.