Q: Are ski resorts capitalizing on the conversations created by the Sochi Olympics?

After a recent Stash post we received a question that piqued our interest. With so much conversation about skiing coming from winter sports being on the world’s stage, are resorts joining the conversation to capitalize on the games or are they standing on the sidelines? With the games in their final week, this is what we found.

The Goods
To find our answer we looked at a small window of time – the week before the opening ceremonies and the first week of the games – and used social media posts by U.S. resorts as our sample. While not perfect, this does give a pretty solid indicator of resorts’ Sochi-themed efforts on these and other channels.

This two-week sample included 7,000 tweets, 6,000 Facebook posts, and 1,300 Instagram photos. We looked only at how many active resort accounts (i.e., posted at least once during that time frame) mentioned one of a few Olympic words or tags. So, if 200 resorts posted at least once and 100 of them mentioned “sochi” at least once, the rate would be 50%.

At the most generic level, the word “olympic” was only used by about 28% of resorts on Twitter and Facebook with only about 3-6% of resorts including the more specific #teamusa hashtag in their posts. The name of the host country was used least of all coming in at around 1% while the host city saw many more mentions.

What This Means
Overall we were a little surprised to see how few resorts are mentioning the Olympics. And why is this happening? It’s tough to say, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s partly due to IOC rules that place strict guidelines on how brands can talk about athletes (especially ones they sponsor) during the games.

Breaking a rule is one thing, but some resorts have made headlines for well-meaning, unintended infractions. With blurred lines between advertising and content, these public reprimands may have lead some marketers into a “better safe than sorry” mentality.

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