Wow. What a weekend for British sport! And where there’s more sport, there are more Olympics PR tales. Here’s today’s five…
Worst judge of national mood: The Daily Mail & Daily Telegraph’s odd campaign against ‘plastic Brits’ now looks not just xenophobic and racist, but utterly ridiculous and out of touch, as the spoof front pages (including this one by BeardedGenius) show. Good luck to Hope Not Hate’s ‘This Is My Country’ campaign, inspired by Mo Farah’s interview on the subject – which must go down as the Quote of the Games.
Worst TV Scheduling Decision: NBC’s decision not to screen the 100m final live in the US. Or, in fact, quite a few other key Olympics moments. They’re not having a great Olympics and now there’s even a Change.org petition against them.
Best consumer product: Forget the official merchandise and the stuffed alien mascots, surely all everyone really wants is a Wiggo iPhone cover from Skinnydip.
Most inappropriate winning comments: Athletes deserve some time to let down their hair after winning a medal, but given the nature of his event, shooting gold medallist Peter Wilson should perhaps not suggest that he’s going to celebrate by “going to get very, very drunk and do something stupid.”
Number One Facebook Athlete: David Beckham. The man isn’t even competing, but his social media profile is still soaring after his role in the Olympics. What’s even more interesting in social media company Alchemy’s report, is the massive growth in support for Team GB on Facebook as the nation started to swing behind the Games.
As their blog says, “in terms of engagement (people talking about), the GB and US team [Facebook] pages are neck and neck with almost quarter of a million people engaging with each page in the past week. Traffic to the official Team GB site also increased by 150 per cent in the last week.”
And with this being the first really social Olympics, I hope we see more data like this!
