adidas v Nike in social media battle! #2

Last month we published an analysis showing social media mentions of adidas and Nike after looking at a report into people’s awareness of Olympic Games sponsors. Since then Nike launched its ‘find your greatness’ London campaign in time for the Olympic Opening Ceremony.

Just as the verdict stood a month ago on the rival companies’ social media mentions, Nike is currently still in the lead.

However, after reading Anthony Burgess-Webb‘s post which discusses whether a non-sponsor can outperform an official sponsor with ambush marketing, we delved further by looking at the ratio of Twitter followers to mentions where adidas’ network is larger and therefore its reach is greater.

So does it pay of to be a sponsor? Stella McCartney is working as the creative director for adidas kitting out team GB. Having her on board, tweeting about her collection, has made it possible for adidas to reach a greater audience; Stella is among the top five most influencial people tweeting about adidas and the Olympics. Nike’s top tweeters are individuals tweeting what distances they have run using the tracking device Nikeplus. adidas’ association with the Olympics is strengthening but will they be able to exploit this success in the long run? 

Cision Social Media was used to conduct the analysis. Pie chart was created via Cision Social Media.