Olympics Comedown

Some great data analysis ideas we can take away from the London Olympics.

Usain Bolt
Photo Credit: John D’Arcy

Some marketing managers in Great Britain are currently doing somersaults better than McKayla Maroney. Champagne sales went up 12 percent in the last week of the London Olympics and some of it is down to those people who are bonused on brand customer satisfaction scores. The feel-good factor in the country drove increases in CSAT scores. I know because I’ve seen the data for a number of well-known U.K. brands and there is a significant leap thanks to Jess Ennis and her teammates.

In my last column, I was getting overexcited about the imminent start of London 2012. I live a couple of miles from the main site and have to say that it was the most fun couple of weeks in London I can remember. But now, although it’s back to the day job, I’ve still been thinking of Olympics lessons about datasets, visualizations, and analysis. So as well as analyzing the impact of the Games on my clients’ satisfaction scores, I’ve also been looking for great data analysis ideas to help me in future projects. Here are a few thoughts.

Standard Metrics Only Tell Half the Story

If you followed London 2012, you will have seen the medal table every day. But was that a fair reflection on achievements by each country? Were there other bits of data that added that extra dimension for insight? The Guardian’s data blog in the U.K. and The Wall Street Journal both analyzed medal performance, not just on overall numbers but also against country population, GDP, and team size.

So let’s call out Grenada as the country that was actually the most impressive in the Games. They smashed both the U.S. and Great Britain in terms of medals per head of population. And as The Wall Street Journal pointed out, how about all those failures on the Great Britain team as well the gold medals? Maybe a net win/loss tally wouldn’t have had Great Britain so high up the table.

What’s great about these sites is that they think about extra (and free) sources of data that complement the initial analysis. It’s the equivalent of mashing two sets of data together – say web analytics and customer complaints data – to get a fuller view of performance. And as The Wall Street Journal proved, it’s important to look at both ends of performance, analyzing differences in behavior between your best customers and your detractors.

Having Fun Ways of Presenting Data Is Always Important

If you love data go and have a play here and here and take inspiration for your own infographics.

Lots of other sites I’ve seen highlighted the quirky nature of the data and showed how it related to people’s behaviors and emotions. This BBC site is a great example. I think the lesson for us when presenting data is to make a story about people’s behaviors – your conversion analysis isn’t just a stack of numbers in a funnel, but a story about people’s frustrations, wants, and desires. That’s a lot more inspiring to a website designer than just telling him his conversion rate sucks.

The Big Analytics Question – Was It All Worth It? What’s the ROI?

There’s been a fair few soul-searching articles in the U.K. press that try and analyze the hard numbers and the perceived uplifts. Mark Ritson’s cynical article is a great example. So I did some really simple analysis myself.

We’re told that the cost of the Games to the British taxpayer was £9 billion. There are around 26 million taxpayers in Britain so that equates to about £350 (or $550) each. I did a straw poll of my mates in the pub on the weekend and most people would actually happily pay that again next year just to have the world’s biggest party come back. Of course, a pensioner in the Northern Isles of Scotland is likely to have a different perspective. But my point is that my analysis begins to tell a personal story, as does the impact on brand CSAT scores I talked about earlier. Classic ROI isn’t always possible to measure the impact of a big event, or a new website launch, or even a big advertising campaign. So the challenge for the analyst is to find available data and metrics that anyone can understand.

So was it all worth it? The picture at the top of this column is one I took of Usain Bolt about five minutes after he’d won the 100 meters gold medal. Persistence pays off and on the day of the 100 meters I fluked a ticket from the much maligned London 2012 website and was one of the lucky 80,000 to see the fastest man ever to walk this earth. Now, that’s one of the best success metrics I’ve ever heard of.

Subscribe to get your daily business insights

Whitepapers

US Mobile Streaming Behavior
Whitepaper | Mobile

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

5y

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

Streaming has become a staple of US media-viewing habits. Streaming video, however, still comes with a variety of pesky frustrations that viewers are ...

View resource
Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups
Whitepaper | Analyzing Customer Data

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups

5y

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics f...

Data is the lifeblood of so many companies today. You need more of it, all of which at higher quality, and all the meanwhile being compliant with data...

View resource
Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people
Whitepaper | Digital Marketing

Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its peopl...

2y

Learning to win the talent war: how digital market...

This report documents the findings of a Fireside chat held by ClickZ in the first quarter of 2022. It provides expert insight on how companies can ret...

View resource
Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy
Report | Digital Transformation

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy

1m

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Exp...

Customers decide fast, influenced by only 2.5 touchpoints – globally! Make sure your brand shines in those critical moments. Read More...

View resource