Title: Alcohol, sponsorship, and new media activation: an investigation of Molson Canadian and the 2014 Olympic Games

Authors: Andrea N. Geurin; Sarah Gee

Addresses: Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management, Griffith Business School, Nathan Campus, Griffith University, Glyn Davis Building (N72), Room 0.40, 170 Kessels Road, Nathan QLD 4111, Australia ' School of Sport and Exercise, Massey University, Room 2.14, PTC Building, Turitea, Palmerston North, 4442, New Zealand

Abstract: Beer brand Molson Canadian (MC) was an official supporter of Canada's Olympic team for the 2014 Sochi Games; regarded by many as the pinnacle event for winter sports athletes and teams. This paper investigates the use of social media by MC with respect to Canadian teams and athletes who competed at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. A content analysis of Molson Canadian's Facebook page and Twitter account was conducted from 6 February 2014 to 24 February 2014, spanning the entire time period of the Sochi 2014 Games. Results and discussion highlight the topics and categories MC focussed on in its posts and tweets and the engagement elicited from each type of post. These results shed light on MC's social media sponsorship activation effectiveness. MC's posts/tweets were significantly more focused on reporting informational and promotional content than posts/tweets of an interactive nature, which indicates that MC did not exclusively prompt customer interaction during their Olympic sponsorship, a key finding based on the existing literature on this social media effectiveness.

Keywords: Olympic sponsors; sponsorship effectiveness; sport marketing; new media; alcohol; Olympic Games; Canada; Facebook; Twitter; social media; 2014 Olympics; Sochi Olympics; Winter Olympics; beer brands; content analysis; sponsorship activation; informational content; promotional content; customer interaction.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSMM.2014.073209

International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, 2014 Vol.15 No.5/6, pp.322 - 339

Received: 19 Dec 2014
Accepted: 25 Jul 2015
Published online: 27 Nov 2015 *

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