If you’ve been reading the US news, you might get the impression that certain people and brands took a beating at Sochi. Many thought Vladimir Putin’s image suffered, as much for the facilities as for Russia’s attitude towards the LGBT community. Brand experts also warned that sponsors like McDonalds would pay a heavy price for supporting the Games. Here’s the surprise: None of that seems to be true—at least not in the US. A little background. At POSSIBLE, we use a tool called social sentiment analysis to help us understand what people think about brands. It allows us to search on keywords, like “McDonalds” or “Putin,” across a range of social media platforms and find out what people are saying about them. Social sentiment analysis doesn’t paint a perfect picture of a brand’s health. McDonalds, for example, has plenty of fans, but they tend to be quiet on social media. Instead, this kind of analysis can tell you how events are affecting a brand. If more people view McDonalds negatively as a result of Sochi, that would show up in the numbers. Here's some numbers our performance team pulled together around social sentiment and the Sochi Olympics

1. POSSIBLE
SOCHI 2014
SENTIMENT STUDY
February 25, 2014

2. 2

3. Putin + Sochi Sentiment Study
Social sentiment around Vladimir Putin.
3

4. While you might assume that the
enormous amount of negative
press surrounding the Sochi
Olympics and Vladimir Putin
would lead to a precipitous
decline in overall sentiment, this
has not been the case. According
to the data, when mentioning
Putin in conjunction with the
Olympics, his overall negative
sentiment declines. This would
indicate that his handling of the
event has managed to improve
his public perception.
4

5. Findings
• Following the Opening Ceremonies, conversations including Putin + Olympics showed an 8% decline
in negative sentiment while conversations including only Putin increased in negative sentiment by 5%.
• When comparing the beginning of the measurement period (before Opening Ceremonies) to the end,
Putin and Putin+Olympics conversations started at a delta of 10.7% and closed with a delta of 1.8%.
• In total, there was a total of 1,983 tweets involving the phrases Sochi and Problems. However, the
majority of these took place in a period between 2/3 and 2/12 with instances of these mentions
dropping off sharply thereafter.
• This data reflects US numbers only.
5

6. McDonald’s
Tempest in a Twitter teapot.
Social sentiment around McDonalds, which were attacked by the
LGBT community for their support of Sochi, did not show any major
change over the course of the games.
6

7. 50K
100%
Sentiment and Volume - Monthly
45K
90%
67%
40K
80%
35K
66%
70%
30K
60%
25K
50%
20K
40%
15K
30%
10K
33%
32%
5K
20%
10%
0%
0
Nov-13
Dec-13
Volume
Jan-14
Positive
Feb-14
Negative
Sentiment and Volume - February 2014
8K
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
7K
6K
5K
4K
3K
2K
1K
0
Volume
Positive
Negative
In late January, as a means of protest,
LGBT activists hijacked the hashtag
#CheersToSochi which was part of a social
campaign launched by McDonald’s to promote the
Olympic games.
McDonald’s ended the campaign prematurely but
overall the controversy shows no substantial
impact on brand sentiment.
Share of positive and negative showed little
change between January and February and
relative to earlier months, share of negative
sentiment shrank.
Looking at daily trends we can see the volatile
nature of sentiment – underscoring the importance
of monitoring over an extended period and not just
relative to a specific event.
7

8. Stolichnaya
Stoli has come under fire because it is seen as a Russian
brand. In fact, it is not. Stoli is a Latvian brand that is in a
fierce trade dispute with a Russian company of the same
name. Nonetheless, it is getting hit hard.
8

9. Stolichnaya - Sentiment and Volume - Monthly
700
100%
90%
600
80%
67%
500
56%
400
70%
“Stolichnaya” and “Stoli” trend similarly month
over month with a marked increased in share of
negative sentiment at the beginning of February
when the Olympic games began.
60%
50%
300
40%
44%
200
33%
30%
20%
100
10%
0
0%
Nov-13
Dec-13
Volume
Jan-14
Negative
Feb-14
Positive
Stoli - Sentiment and Volume - Monthly
Stoli - Sentiment and Volume - February 2014
100%
Volume
Negative
Positive
Volume
Positive
Negative
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2/20/2014
2/19/2014
2/18/2014
Feb-14
2/17/2014
Jan-14
2/16/2014
Dec-13
2/15/2014
Nov-13
2/14/2014
0%
2/13/2014
10%
0
2/12/2014
20%
26%
500
30%
2/11/2014
1K
2/10/2014
40%
42%
2/9/2014
50%
2K
2/8/2014
60%
2/7/2014
57%
2/6/2014
2K
2/5/2014
70%
73%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
2/4/2014
3K
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
2/3/2014
80%
2/2/2014
90%
3K
2/1/2014
4K

10. Findings
• While daily trends reflect the volatility of social media, a month over month view is best to observe
appreciable shift in share of sentiment.
• Though the impact of a brand controversy may be immediately reflected in daily volume and
sentiment share, when we look at a 3 or 6 month trend we see that the effect is not lasting.
• In the case of all brands analyzed, adding in qualifying keywords such as “sochi”, “Olympics” or
“boycott” reduced the volume of related posts such that the data could not be analyzed for sentiment.
• There may be a larger takeway here in that there should be different approaches when analyzing
sentiment of a brand vs analyzing sentiment around an issue, event or person.
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