Cisco Wants Flip In On NBC's Olympic 2012 Plans

nbc/olympic

There are about 750 days to go before the London 2012 games, but Cisco wants a rerun on NBC for online content and sponsorship plans.

Cisco provided NBC with Flip video cameras to allow U.S. athletes, bloggers, reporters and analysts to record the behind-the-scenes stories in Vancouver and share the videos on NBCOlympics.com. It's not clear whether NBC will enter into a similar agreement with the company for the upcoming Olympic games that begin July 27, 2012, although Cisco will support the advanced infrastructure for the London 2012 games.

The collaborative efforts of NBC and Cisco during the Vancouver games produced positive returns. Between January and March 2010, the 26 Flip-filmed videos created during the Olympics garnered more than 292,000 minutes watched; 650,000 page views on NBCOlympics.com; 650,000 page views on Cisco.com; and 36% increase in followers of Cisco's Twitter handle, @CiscoSP360.

The idea of a low-cost alternative to video production and the notion of encouraging recording and sharing of footage drove NBC to partner with Cisco. The footage would also remain on the site to keep the buzz alive long after a contest had ended. At the Vancouver games, NBC's production crew edited and posted footage submitted by Flip users. Both companies tapped into Cisco's and NBC's social media channels, from Facebook to Twitter to video blogs. Teams used consistent tagging in social media to increase reach.

NBC also created a Cisco tracker on Twitter to follow keywords, which led people to the video footage, according to Zoya Fallah, social media manager at Cisco Service Provider Video Solutions.

Not everything went smoothly, and Fallah admits that if Cisco has the chance to do it again in England some things will change. For example, they would archive all footage in one place rather than distributing it across the NBCOylmpics.com; pre-plan how, when and what type of metrics to track before the program instead of during; determine who will leverage the Flip footage and Twitter tweets; monitor and track athletes' tweets to increase social media awareness; capture more photos at the games and not only post to NBCOlympics.com, but Flickr, too. And finally, they would create a better and stronger joint social media plan.

For Cisco, a successful campaign didn't mean tying Web site traffic to sales, but rather meant building awareness for the Flip camera, according to George Tupy, digital media solutions manager, Cisco Service Provider Video Solutions. "That's how marketing dollars are measured," he says.

Next story loading loading..