For any die-hard Olympic enthusiasts like me, you already know that today is a special day. It’s exactly one month from the beginning of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing (on 08/08/08) and media attention is already starting to turn towards these Games in a more frenzied way. For several months now, I have been part of the team here in Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence group working on what I believe will be one of the most unique Olympic sponsorships of the coming games. Of course, I’m biased since I work on the campaign, but yesterday we started to spread the word about a new campaign that I have mentioned already once before on this blog.
The campaign is called The Voices of the Olympic Games and over the past several months we have recruited 100 athletes from more than 25 countries and more than 30 sports to all blog about their experiences leading up to the games. Our campaign strategy, in a sentence is:
Use Lenovo products to power athletes sharing their real experiences leading up to and during the Olympic Games directly with fans around the world.
There are several reasons why I’m really excited about this campaign. The most obvious is that as part of it, I will be heading to Beijing to offer a live voice – something I can’t wait to do. More than that, however, the scale of this project and bringing this many real voices together from so many different cultures and sports is a much needed view of the Games that will be unique in its lack of melodrama. None of our blog posts will be set to sappy overture-style music, and the stories we have are all an unfiltered view directly from the athletes that are competing.
Along with our site aggregating all these voices at https://summergames.lenovo.com, we are also going to be using a live Twitter feed (@lenovo2008), Flickr, del.ici.ous, and there is a Facebook application created in partnership with Citizen Sports that has already topped 60,000 downloads. I’ll be blogging lots more about the Olympics, but for now please check out our site and let me know what you think. We’ve got another month to put the finishing touches on it before Opening Ceremonies!
Campaign Mentions & Buzz (leave a comment if you’d like to be added to this list):
- Kevin Dugan: https://prblog.typepad.com/strategic_public_relation/2008/07/social-media-br.html
- Adrants: https://www.adrants.com/2008/07/ogilvy-er-lenovo-blogs-and-tweets.php
- MarketingVox: https://www.marketingvox.com/39699-039699/
- Kyle Flaherty: https://www.engageinpr.com/2008/07/08/olympics-and-social-media/
Hi Rohit,
Great work, it is even hard to imagine how much effort this involved. Having worked with Lenovo in the past, I wish you and all your colleagues gold medals in blogging!
– Arseny
PS The only drawback is that you got no athletes from Russia blogging 🙂
This is amazing. I’m already hooked. As a lifelong 110m Hurdles enthusiast (and former hurdler myself) I can’t tell you how awesome it is to read David Oliver’s blog. The aggregating site is pretty good…i’m not a fan of the box with the scroll bar to read the post, and why no comments? But I’m so psyched that you’re pulling this off.
Nice but take a look at this comment from Jennifer Laycock at Search Engine Guide. She makes some good points. We need to incorporate search into everything we do, of course I’m biased. https://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/why-the-social-media-world-needs-to-unde.php
I am not a search marketer….
But I have to agree with Jennifer Laycock and David on incorporating search into social media.
Social media sites are websites themselves too. It’s like how companies are always advised to optimize their websites for search, the same should apply for social media sites too.
Any sites including social media sites should be optimized to its fullest. I believe that even before a site is created, SEO should be brought in to create a proper foundation and structure for the site to be created and designed. This way, the site is optimized from the start and not after launching a site and realizing its not doing as expected.
If a social site isn’t optimized properly in its content, links and the whole user experience on the site isn’t that appealing, the chances of someone spreading the social media site to his/her friends is reduced (or in a sense not optimized).
I find it an irony for social media sites to not have an optimized social experience.
I’m hoping to hear what others think because I’m still new to all these SEO stuff.
First of all, direct email promotion is cost effective. Indeed, you can reach a significant number of people through direct email promotion for a mere fraction of what other types of solicitations can cost.
First of all, direct email promotion is cost effective. Indeed, you can reach a significant number of people through direct email promotion for a mere fraction of what other types of solicitations can cost.
I did not do well at the Olympic Trials. My blog shows what happened leading up to it over the course of a year. Also, there is a trailer of a Olympic Documentary in it by Kleenex. Check it out!
Peace
Jon
http://www.jonkalnas.blogpsot.com
Like what you are doing with the site and it will be nice to hear what’s going on from the Olympians point of view.
Jon
As running goes its clear from the content of your blog that you are on top of you game and your passionate about this sport. Thanks for sharing with me and giving me additional inspiration. I too am in the process of writing about my fav pastime and in this process I am aiming to give some honest reviews of products that are out there in the market, already used for the sport. Thanks James