We've just published our report into the London 2012 'Socialympics' and also made available the underlying dataset, which runs to some 43,500 data points. We reckon this is the longest and most comprehensive study ever undertaken into the comparative performance of key Olympics sponsors in activating their sponsorships through social media and networks. It used our PRINT™ performance measurement system to provide a purely quantitative assessment of sponsor brands’ performance on websites, Twitter, Facebook...

As the echoes fade in the London 2012 stadium, time for a review of the London 2012 Social Scoreboard and the social media performance of the sponsor brands which it has been tracking for the last four months. We’ll be producing a short report in due course but meanwhile here is a round-up of the changes we've seen. Early movers It is estimated that around £ one billion to £ two billion will have been spent by...

In recent weeks, I’ve been asked by a number of mainstream media reporters whether an Olympics ambush marketing strategy can pay off and allow a non-sponsor to outperform a sponsor, especially in social media? The obvious answer is, in principle, yes – despite ever-tighter IOC and LOCOG rules. But it’s all in the execution – as a recent comparison between adidas and Nike shows. Sportswear firm and major Olympics sponsor adidas has already consolidated its position in...

Just when I’d begun to work out what all the LIBOR fuss was about along comes the  ‘discovery’ of the Higgs-Boson. It’s much worse. Apparently it’s all about the God particle (Goddess particle anyone, so we can have more of them?) which gives the universe mass. Having been sent all the Higgs-Boson jokes by my geekie friends (you know who you are) I found myself in a meeting this week trying to explain the...

In these days of anticipated national decline - even fragmentation - it is good to be reminded that there things the Brits are still good at, beyond Royal celebrations, the BBC and national surveillance cameras. One such is the UK higher education sector which consistently ranks highly in world terms and is a destination of choice for many international students. Yet there is evidence that this sector could without attention, atrophy and fragment, especially in the...

The Googlemonster’s unveiling of its new ‘Knowledge Graphs’ makes perfect strategic sense for them and their finances. And it also makes huge sense for anyone trying to conduct a sensible search these days and get real value. Since search became the dominant knowledge acquisition paradigm in the late 1990’s, there have been attempts to find some ‘meta’ search method. This usually involved parallel search and subsequent disambiguation – anyone remember Mamma? But the huge...

Well, despite the fuss, I doubt our friends at Facebook are too worried by GM pulling its ads. If it affects the price of their $96 Billion IPO by a few $100 millions well hey, they’ll grin and bear it, I’m guessing, from San Francisco to Singapore. And you can’t blame GM for trying – ads seem to work most everywhere else online  eg Google - so why not on Facebook? Well, even assuming the ads...

My post last month suggesting a development of the Forrester POE (Paid, Owned, Earned) media model in favour of a 4 part BEOS content model – Bought, Earned, Owned, Shared – has found some critics…. Where we can all agree is that whatever definitions we create, the ‘boundaries’ are blurring and this is generating real confusion. And we are all trying to make sense of a fast-changing scene – busily taking snapshots/instagrams of a...

Tim Berners-Lee has entered the lists once again this week in defence of the Internet rights of the individual . Not only is he fighting on both sides of the Atlantic but on two fronts – against snooping and against commercial enclosure of the common land of the Internet. In a recent post, I wrote about some of the hypocrisy around the UK Govt’s position in seeking to legalise snooping...

Today, 100 days out, the final countdown has begun for the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics and we are starting a social media performance study of the sponsors, using our PRINT™ methodology. The 25 main global and local sponsors have paid heavily for official rights to the five rings. Estimates of around £1 billion ($1.6 bn) have been widely reported. But these sponsorship rights are just part of the cost. Partners and sponsors will have to...