MostContagious2012.pdf - Contagious Magazine

London 2012 /
The spirit of the Olympic Games was summed
up during Danny Boyle’s epic opening ceremony,
when father of the web, Tim Berners-
Lee, took centre-stage and live-tweeted: ‘This is
for everyone’. The message coursed around the
stadium on over 70,000 handheld pixel screens
wielded by the crowd. London 2012 was an
Olympic Games for, about and powered by the
people.
Beyond the sentiment of this message was the
amplification of the Olympics via social media,
prompting the ‘Social Games’ tag. According to
monitoring agency Radian 6, 9.9 million Olympic
tweets were sent over the course of the 17 days.
Tracking tool VenueSeen revealed that 260,000
images were uploaded to Instagram with the
hashtag #London2012.
High levels of interaction were sustained, with
#Paralympics trending worldwide during the
Paralympics closing ceremony. For the first time
in their 52-year history, the Paralympic Games
sold out, proving that, in mobilising and empowering
the masses, London 2012 created an insatiable
appetite for Olympic competition which
united every nation that took part, tuned in and
tweeted. Well played, social media.
bit.ly/olympics-social-infographic
bit.ly/olympics-instagram
US Presidential Election /
When Obama won his first term in office in
2008, it was no secret that his team wielded a
distinct advantage over McCain et al. thanks to
their competency in the social web and engaging
the hoards of precious young voters who
were flocking to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
2012, however, was a different matter; not
only were the Republicans catching up in the
polls as well as in their social media competency,
but Obama’s team now had to appeal to
a much wider range of demographics on social
platforms (Facebook’s user base had increased
from 100 million to 800 million). Also the novelty
of social media was wearing off for many voters,
so the same issues that face the world’s biggest
brands today also troubled both parties’ election
teams – namely figuring out how to offer genuine
relevance and value.
Photo © It’s Your London / www.itsyourlondon.co.uk
Mitt Romney’s digital director, 33-year-old Zac
Moffatt, claimed in a pre-election interview with
Mashable that Obama’s team was ‘still running
their Facebook campaign like it’s 2008’. In contrast
to the Obama team’s failure to adapt and
evolve, he claimed that his strategy centred on
driving engagement only on the platforms most
relevant to Romney and his campaign. These
were Google, Facebook and Twitter, although
Moffatt also flirted with Instagram and Pinterest.
Yet the Obama administration’s head start on all
these platforms proved too much to overcome. At
the time of election, Obama’s 28.8m Facebook
Likes played Romney’s 7.1m; 19.9m Twitter followers
played 1.1m. In terms of activity, the two
teams employed surprisingly similar tactics, both
opting for consistent, lightweight engagement
and tempting voters with competitions to win dinner
with Obama or a ride on Romney’s jet.
The key difference, however, was tone. Obama’s
team painted a far more intimate and personal
picture of their candidate. In the end, it was
this that signified Obama’s timely rediscovery of
the ‘everyman’ mojo that won the world’s heart
in 2008 and ended up clinching him a second
MOVEMENTs purpose sErVicE data technology design social biz sharing amplified screens augmented retail personalise new loyalty payment sbpf
Photo: bit.ly/11pWuzJ
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