Social Media won the gold medal in the Olympics 2016.

Rio 2016 was amazing in many ways, the spectacular opening ceremony, watched by 350 million people, has shown to the world the importance of protecting our environment, 27 world records have been broken, Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps confirming their status as the best athletes ever seen in athletics and swimming, the South African Wayde van Niekirk has broken Michael Johnson’s the 17 years old historic record, the high performance of team Japan in many sports just warming up for Tokio 2020,the first refugee team competing, the Olympic spirit displayed by the New Zealand runner Nikki Hamblin and the memorable closing ceremony ending as a Brazilian Carnival party.    

Furthermore, The Olympics was a success on Social Media by reaching 3.7 billion active engagements, the opening night had more than 1.4 million mentions worldwide. The social networks used to follow the games by reach were, according to Adweek: Facebook, Twiiter, Instagram,Youtube and Snapchat.

Snapchat , the most popular platform among millennials, had an impressive reach of 50 Million people during the first week of Rio 2016,

mainly because of the efforts made by NBC and Buzzfeed that generated live and dedicated content on one Snapchat channel, proving how important media convergence became for broadcasters when joined their coverage on more than one platform, in this case TV + Social Media.

Also the big starts of Rio 2016 had a huge impact on the internet. One of the buzziest days was when the American gold medalist gymnast Simone Biles met the Hollywood star Zack Efron on Today Show, resulting in almost 500,000 retweets, comments and likes, and this boost wasn’t happened because of the presence of a celebrity on a TV Show, Simone was the start of the moment, her performance on floor routine also reached more than 500,000 engagements. And what about Michael Phelps, the most successful swimmer of all times, who won in his entire career more medals than 63 countries. He was the most mentioned athlete during the 3 week event with more than 1 million mentions, followed by Usain Bolt (with more than 700,000 mentions). Usain Bolt also had many brilliant moments in the Olympics, but the his  iconic photo with a winning smile took by Cameron Spencer in the 100 mts semifinals was unique, it was shared everywhere, generated many memes on the following days and has became news all over the world.

On the other hand, brands with long term sponsoring deals with these outstanding athletes take great events such the Olympics to amplify their presence.  Under Armour film “Rule Yourself” https://youtu.be/Xh9jAD1ofm4  starring Michael Phelps has almost 11 million views on YouTube, Gatorade “The boy who learned to fly” https://youtu.be/6b03jWW70kc , telling the history of Usain Bolt, has more than 12 million views. Both brands are not sponsoring the games, only the athletes, what made this a great strategy to be perceived by consumers in a high clutter competition scenario. Nevertheless, Coca-Cola, Samsung and Visa experienced great results on Social Media, being mention most due the usage of specific hastags for the event on digital and engaging fans on multi platforms initiatives. The #possomais (Visa) was the best performed term among all and Coca-coca the brand that earned the most number of mentions (34,400).

Tokyo 2020 will inherit from Rio 2016 will pass on content distribution, the audience that will not be able to be in the Japanese arenas will want to feel like they are sitting in the front row of each event, so it will be important to give a great experience in every platform by creating additional and dedicate content for TV, Social and Mobile; engagement by the athletes who will be able to get even closer to their fans, sharing emotions and unique moments and relevant stories that brands will have to create to involve consumers and strategies based on their starts, the next Olympics won’t be about just selling products, it will be about media convergence.

The first step has been taken in Rio 2016, making the social media to be the gold medalist, and in Tokyo 2020 the stage is set to be the Olympics when convergence will standout. 

Sources: Adweek.com, Mention.com