London 2012 Watch: P&G Leads Social Video Race as Lord Coe Curbs Tweeting

There's no question that the London 2012 Summer Olympics will be the most social Olympic Games in history. Just how social is starting to come into focus. The attention (and money) being spent on the social aspects of the Olympics continues to escalate as billions of dollars change hands for marketing rights, and sponsors scramble for proof positive that those dollars are converting into online video views and shares.

Unruly Media, producers of the video buzz tracking Viral Video Chart, has released a dynamic interactive ranking of the social clout of every Olympic-themed commercial across the web for 25 Olympic sponsors. The breakaway winner?

The top spot goes to Procter & Gamble’s two-minute "Best Job" commercial for its London 2012 "Thank You, Mom" campaign, already a winner for its emotional impact. P&G's full-length "Best Job" spot has garnered more than 2,025,584 shares and 11,764,313 views, compared to Nike's full-length "Write the Future" World Cup 2010 spot, which garnered 1.4 million shares, and VW's 5 million-plus shares for its 2011 Super Bowl "Little Vader" homage, "The Force." 

Unruly COO & Co-Founder Sarah Wood explains the importance of video on social marketing below:

Gorkana created another infographic showing which Olympic sponsors are using social media effectively and garnering greatest share of voice in the U.K. Coca-Cola is in the lead for driving conversations by featuring boy band The Wanted in the Olympic torch relay.

The International Olympic Committee's social media head Alex Huot told PaidContent that restrictions on athlete’s and attendee’s stadium photo uploads are required to ‘protect broadcast rightsholders’ outlay.’ He added said that “media organisations and sport tournaments are now each part of the same network.” 

The IOC has enhanced the London 2012 Olympic Athletes’ Hub where fans can sign-in via Twitter or Facebook to see past and present Olympians’ aggregated social updates in one place as well as leave comments, register ‘likes,’ and tweet or retweet.

The hub also enables questions from fans via Twitter to one featured Olympian daily, before and during the Games, and will soon include an Olympic Challenge game integrated with Facebook, where users predict event outcomes. The hub aggregates the IOC's London 2012 feeds on Instagram, Google+, Tumblr, and Foursquare.

Even so, Olympic medal-winner Sebastian Coe is warning athletes who are eager-tweeters (the Guardian rounded a few twitpics here) they may imperil their performance. “I have found quite a close correlation between the number of tweets at competitive times and the level of under-performance," the two-time Olympic gold medalist reportedly said. "I have found a direct correlation between the amount of activity an athlete enters into on social media and their ultimate performance when it really matters — but that's for them to figure out.”

For a data-driven event, perhaps Lord Coe will see fit to share those statistics at his next press conference.