Known as the first “Social Olympics," the 2012 London Games set the bar for how notable events are covered by media, brands, athletes and consumers alike. As the official U.S. broadcaster of the Olympics, NBC embraced the opportunity to deliver compelling stories via five social platforms, across multiple screens. With 26 sports, 17 days of competition, a five-hour time difference and 3,500+ hours of live video on nbcolympics.com, the challenge, as the official rights holder, of covering the Games on social media was unprecedented. And that challenge didn’t begin on the day of the Opening Ceremony. NBC took a hierarchical approach to its social strategy months in advance, distinguishing between pre-Games and in-Games. The foundation laid leading up to the 2012 Olympics was paramount to NBC’s overall social success, focusing on community growth, awareness-building and excitement. In-Games presented a greater challenge: balancing the distribution of simultaneous live-streams, the announcement of results, the celebration of victory, trend-monitoring, on-air integration and editorial to complement the nightly primetime broadcast. In addition to a robust editorial plan across NBC Olympics’ five social platforms and a mobile app, NBC recognized the integral role social would play around the 2012 Games beyond its own coverage, which led to partnerships with both Facebook and Twitter. The partnerships not only solidified NBC Olympics as the informer of record across social, but in boosting awareness for the two platforms throughout NBC’s broadcast, it worked to celebrate, encourage and ultimately promote the use of social media on the whole. As an extension of the brand that has broadcast every Olympics since 1996, NBC Olympics social channels -- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Google+ -- effectively drove conversation, welcomed new audiences and amplified excitement. NBC Olympics was the single largest driver of social TV conversation, with 2.4 million new people joining. In all, there were more than 82 MILLION comments made about the Olympics across social media between July 27, 2012 and August 12, 2012, making it more social than the 2012 Super Bowl, Grammys, Oscars, Golden Globes and all seven games of the 2011 World Series combined. Furthermore, 36 million of those comments were related to the NBC telecasts. Between 7 p.m. and midnight for the 17 days of competition, 99 percent of social buzz was attributed to NBC’s primetime coverage. Off air during the Games, NBC Olympics saw 86 percent fan growth on Facebook, 97 percent fan growth on Twitter, and gained 69,000 followers on Instagram and 4,300 followers on Tumblr.
www.facebook.com/nbcolympics www.twitter.com/nbcolympics www.instagram.com/nbcolympics nbcolympics.tumblr.com
