Are All Gold Medals Created Equal?
When it comes to social media discussion and celebrity, the answer is a resounding no.
To date, U.S. Olympians have won five gold medals in the 2012 games. They have been mentioned 176,568 times on social media over the past few days. Some, such as Lochte and Franklin are household names. As of now Franklin is a slightly bigger social media phenomenon than Lochte.
But what about the other gold medalists?
Matt Grevers is getting short shrift behind Lochte and Phelps, which just shows the danger of being overshadowed by competition that have bigger brand names to begin with (despite Grevers being tied for the most medals to date).
And if you are Kim Rhode or Dana Vollmer? You are not getting the attention you deserve. Rhode won a Gold in Women’s skeet, yet has been mentioned only 1,598 times over the past few days. To put it in perspective, that is a 0.8% share of voice. Even then, she is beating Dana Vollmer, gold medalist who won the women’s 100m butterfly, who received a bit more than 1,400 mentions.
This reinforces that point that while social media is increasing Olympic buzz to a height never seen before, it is still being driven by the more prominent sports and what NBC makes a focus.
Posted by Mark McClennan on July 31, 2012 at 9:31 AM
