Impact of Social Media on Promoting Olympic Games: A Comparative Analysis with Traditional Methods

This paper explores the profound impact of social media on promoting the Olympic Games, comparing its effectiveness with traditional promotional methods. It examines how social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have revolutionized the way Olympic events are marketed and consumed by audiences worldwide. The paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of social media marketing in the context of the Olympics, highlighting its ability to reach a wider audience, engage with fans, and generate real-time discussions. It also delves into the role of traditional media, such as television, print, and billboards, in promoting the Games and how they complement social media efforts. By comparing and contrasting these two approaches, the paper provides insights into the evolving landscape of Olympic marketing and the future of promotional strategies in the digital age.

Impact social media has had on promoting Olympic
against more traditional methods
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Ways social media influences Olympic promotional activities.................................................3
Use of social media platforms for Olympic Promotions............................................................5
Role of Traditional promotional activities for promoting Olympics.........................................5
Comparison between traditional and social media promotions for Olympic Games.................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
Reference list............................................................................................................................10
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Introduction
Audience and organizers of global events have already recognized the value of social media
platform as a primary component for communication. Now they are focusing on
correspondingly beginning to leverage alternative practices for promotions and marketing
practices which are more efficient in actively engaging customers. This scenario is mostly
evident in the case of sport audience and it has been observed that such users are one of the
most active types of users in the social media platforms. The inclination of sport users for
social media platforms is facilitating some major changes in the world of Olympics.
Ways social media influences Olympic promotional activities
Before the social media came into the scenario of communication and mass media, Olympic
Games remained limited in the small frame of news papers and television and news feeds
were mostly related to top athletes and medal count. However, now, when social media has
come into the scenario, the area for discussion has become diversified. Now it is shedding
lights on behind-the-scene politics, success stories of emerging stars and such topics that
previous remained under the shadow. The social media is influencing the image of Olympics
in both positive and negative ways and both and eventually essential as people like to ponder
over such event that is creating huge fuzz in the mass media (Tang and Cooper, 2017).
Therefore, the role social media promotional activities in promoting the big events like
Olympic are mostly positive and beneficial for the events.
The organizers are now realizing the significance of such media platforms and therefore
opting for social media marketing providing more scope to the audience for voicing their
perceptions. Now a major amount of discussion regarding Olympic take place in the virtual
arena of social media. However, this new trend is negative aspects too (Katz, 2016). For
example, the over estimation of some events and unconstructive discussions results into
spoiling the real essence of Olympic events. For example, after Rio Olympics corruptions,
spread of Zica virus and others such topics became more important area for discussion rather
than the achievements of the participants and the effort that this developing nation given for
organizing the event.
Therefore, the credibility and viability of the use of social media for promoting the positive
side of events like Olympics is still under question. However, they way it has encouraged the
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participation of global audience which is mostly unattainable by traditional media and
methods, is also remarkable and appreciable. The social media marketing is gradually
replacing the importance of traditional methods (Katz, 2016). However, the traditional media
are still in use and playing a major role from this aspect. The effectiveness of social media for
promoting of major events in comparison with the traditional methods is still a debated topic.
The following section would undertake a comparison between the two types of methods in by
using and evaluating the example of the major global event of Olympic.
The social media promotional activities cover a wide range of discussion associated with the
event and give the audience not a mere glimpse of the major happening of the event but the
associated pictures that are forming the backbone of events. In 2014 Winter Olympics, the
mass media showed an entirely differ side of Olympic in Russia. This time the social media
choose to expose the sub part facilities of Sochi and stray dogs, inedible foods, unfinished
hotel rooms and other aspects. This started the trending line of “Sochi Problems” (Kirilenko
and Stepchenkova, 2017).
Before the starting of 2016 Summer Olympic, the concern regarding the political scenario,
the hygiene and health concern, safety and environmental concern and other relevant issue
relating to the Host country Brazil were major area of discussions in the social media
platforms (Cohen and Watt, 2017). Such discussions along with the news concerning the
core activities of the event resulted into 53 million mentions of those 2016 Rio Summer
Olympics on social media.
This year the media attention has shifted towards the host city, Pyeongchang in South Korea
and the area of discussion is mostly related to the concern regarding the politico-economical
and social relation among the South and North Korea. While this is showing the fact that new
age youngsters are mostly interested and concerned about global issues and happenings
towards it is expected that this would uplift the sale of ticks for this game which presently is
considerably low. This social media intrusion has also bought another major change. It is able
to fetch more brand partners and sponsors. Previously organizations mainly hired the gold
medal winners and popular medalists for their promotional campaigns. Now they are
highlighting on the rising stars and focusing on adapting emotional marketing by portraying
the success stories of the new sport stars.
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Use of social media platforms for Olympic Promotions
The ability of social media for grasping attention of audience has been recognized by the
organizers and they are utilizing this current trend of social media marketing significantly.
For example, in the strategic communication plan in 2012, the organizers of Rio Olympic
relinquished the surprising power of social media and active participation of the audience, by
encouraging them to convey their concern and perceptions regarding the then upcoming
Olympic event. The social media fan page for 2012 Olympic game saw an eye witnessing
number of 4.7 million followers of the event (Nee, 2015).
Despite the popular media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, other social media platform
has also entering into the scenario with remarkable importance. The Rio Olympic also used
Snapchat for giving live event streaming, and this has changed significantly the promotional
approaches and activities of the event. Before The Sochi Olympics, VKontakte, one of the
most popular and well appreciated social media site in Russia has seen a huge number of
followers of Olympic updates (Time, 2018).
Role of Traditional promotional activities for promoting Olympics
No matter how much of the public attention is captured by social media activities and virtual
platforms, the importance of traditional mode of promotion cannot be ignored in the case of
promoting major public events like Olympic. Billboard, print media and other such media
also is playing significantly role in promoting the event. However, while the social media
promotions is able to show both side of the scenario, the traditional mode of promotion
chiefly remains confined in showing the poslsitive aspects of the events (Cottingham and
Petersen-Wagner, 2018). The exposure that such media gives are comparative limited to that
of the social media platforms.
Billboards are mainly used to mark the welcoming time of Olympic. It is mainly used for
creating a sense of enthusiasm among the audience and mostly highlight on the glamorous
side of the events. The news papers and other types of print media have also remained one of
the most prioritized mode for promoting events for Olympic.
Print media also play a major role in the promotional activities of Olympic by printing the
photos and stories of the participants, the sponsor that have partnered with the organizers and
so on. In this era of technological advancement most of the activities are done online and
tickets booking is mostly done though online platforms (International Olympic Committee,
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2018). However, in such places where the use of internet has not become an important part of
life yet, and some other unavoidable circumstances the print media comes an aid for the
purpose of ticket booking.
Comparison between traditional and social media promotions for Olympic Games
The social media promotional activities are taking the world of marketing by storm and are
influencing the perceptions of the audience to a significant level. Most of the organizers of
major events like Olympic, are restoring to the use of social media for their promotional
activities.
A huge number of reasons and benefits are responsible for the organizer’s tendency from
shifting from traditional mode for promotional activities to the social media platforms for this
purpose. One of the major benefits that are gained by using the social media platform is that,
the targeted audience is reached within a very limited period of time (Jost, et al., 2018). The
social media marketing is increasing significantly and is replacing the importance of
traditional media.
However, social media promotional activities for Olympic Games have to go a long way
before achieving the bulging popularity of television. Though, the social media audience and
participant numbers have increased quite significantly over the past years, it is comparatively
paler than the number of television audience that stand at 3.6 billion. With this huge number
of audience, television has still remained a strong contender of the social media platforms. In
the year 2002, the number of Olympic viewers was only 2.1 billion (Forbes.com, 2018). This
became 3.6 billion in the year 2016; this fast change shows the fast expansion of the use of
television channels for Olympic Games.
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Figur: 1: Olympic number of television views over the past years
(Source: Statista, 2018)
However, the use of social media in the Olympics is limited to promoting the events or letting
the users voice their opinions. Olympic is one such event that creates huge impact on the
number of users of social media sites. For example, NFL quarterback Tom Brady, for has
more than 4.4 million followers on Facebook. Another Olympic medalist Kim had a mare of
10000 followers on her twitter page before her participation in the Olympic Games.
Presently she has nearly 330000 users and this indicates the number of popularly she is able
to gain by participating and wining in the Olympics (Forbes.com, 2018). However, if it was
not the social media sites, her popularity would have vanished within just a few months after
her glorious win in the Olympics. From this scenario, this can also be assumed that social
media sites is more entangled with human emotions and preferences while the traditional
media give limited emphasize on such aspects.
In the present scenario, both of the two types of promotional media are important and
complement each other. For example, news paper and television provides information about
the event while the social media profits platform to initiate discussion regarding the news the
audience have gathered from the television and news papers. The reactions that social media
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platforms witness are mostly fueled by the news and announcements taking place in
television and news paper (Katz, 2016). Therefore, it can be stated that the social media is the
flame of the fire where the traditional media are the fuel of it. These two types of media also
contradict in some areas. For example, the social media promotional activities give a faster
reach to the audience, while the traditional media is comparatively tardy in this case.
While traditional media remains confined to the role of providing mere news and criticism
opinion of influential people, the social media platform provides a wide stage to the viewers
as well (Tang and Cooper, 2017). The major different in these two types of media for
promotional campaigns is that, in traditional media the reader or audience did get a little
opportunity to voice their opinions. On the other hand, the case of social media, the audient
or common mass get immense opportunity to take active participation by voicing their
opinions and perceptions. In the case of traditional promotional activities the result remains
limited to the presentation of facts and encouraging people to become a part of its global
audience whereas the social media promotional activities goes beyond the mere fulfilling the
purpose of ticket booking and gathering attention for the promotional campaigns of the brand
partner organizations (Tuten, and Solomon, 2017).
Social media platform plays a more important role in influencing the after effect of Olympic
and for influencing the impression of influential people in the host nations. For example, after
the Rio Olympic, the health issues and incidents associated with the emergence of Zica virus
become a major center of discussions in the social media platform (Van den Broucke and
Van Regenmortel, 2017). Incidents of corruptions and abhorring comments against such
issues get enormous attention from the audience and this somehow results into negative
marketing of the event and deteriorates reputation of the host nation. Therefore, it can be
stated that the social media platforms becomes a foil for both negative and positive
promotion.
Social media promotions is also less time consuming than traditional methods. It keeps
people upgraded with the latest feeds and promotions, while the traditional media is bound to
the limitation of time. For example, in the case of print media like news paper the advertiser
would have to wait for time till it is being printed and delivered to the customers. Chances are
there that the advertisement would get ignored by the reader as such daily journals include
hundreds of advertisements. However, television is only one such traditional method that can
give real time updates to the audience. In the case of Olympic promotions broadcasting
channels pay a major role. Broadcasting organizations invest considerably to buy rights of
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transmission. For example, NBC paid nearly $3,5 billion to the organizers to get a right to
transmission for the Olympics from 2000 to 2008 (The Sport Journal., 2018). The
organizations’ enthusiasm shows the profitability it earns from the event. Promoting through
such channels is always lucrative and beneficial. Therefore, while the importances of other
types of traditional methods are gradually deteriorating, television has still remained in
among the top priorities for promotional activities. However, this again comes with some
limitations as one cannot remain glued to the television screen during the entirely Olympic
event. Therefore, social media platform may again prove more beneficial as they can get
accessed to the promotional activities whenever the viewer would enter into the social media
platforms.
Conclusion
From the above scenario, it is observed that the use of social media is one of the major trends
that are becoming more and more effective for promotional activities. However, the
traditional methods have still remained important for promoting major global events like
Olympic. From the evaluation it can be concluded that the social media is entering into the
field of promotional initiatives and is gradually replacing a major part of the importance of
the traditional methods, but it still is not able to sweep up the significance of traditional
methods entirely. These two types of methods not complement each other. Both of these two
types of media now fulfill the loops holes or limitations of each others. However, it is
observed that, in most of the areas, social media platforms have proved to be more effective
for promoting Olympics. The major limitations of traditional media that can be overcome
with the help of social media are the active interaction of the audience, shredding off of extra
expenses, making the process more time bounded.
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