Olympic fever has gripped the world and technology companies are scrambling to capitalise on fanfare which is currently at its peak. Google trends from the last few days of Olympic events in Rio de Janeiro show that South Africa's Wayde van Niekerk became the top trending search worldwide after setting a world record in the men's 400m, while searches for Usain Bolt's speed surpassed searches for the speed of light by over 100%.

Mpumi Nhlapo, Head of T-Systems South Africa's Marketing, Communications, IT Portfolio and Solution Sales, said, "We have been working closely with Wayde van Niekerk since we announced our partnership with him in May this year. We have since launched the concept of Wayde's World as a public platform to showcase his progress and support him in his sporting efforts as a partner on his journey, this includes the Wayde's World Facebook page and Twitter handle. We have a number of initiatives that we are planning as part of Wayde's World which Wayde is personally taking an active role."

A new microsite and a charitable foundation in Van Niekerk's name are among the projects T-Systems South Africa will be launching in order to extend their association with the athlete, according to Nhlapo.

Jacqui O'Sullivan, Managing Executive for Group Communications & PR at Telkom SA, says the telecommunications company, which is running a marketing campaign with Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt - in addition to sponsorship of South Africa's Olympic and Paralympic teams, has been updating digital content (online and digital outdoor billboards) every three hours since the start of the Olympics, congratulating individual athletes as medals are secured.

"We will continue this [marketing campaign] for the rest of the Olympics and Paralympics. We will also be further leveraging our sponsorship, across our platforms. We are very pleased so far with the performance of our Boltspeed campaign, which highlights the superior speed of our fibre network. We continually evaluate all our advertising campaigns so that we can produce content which resonates with our customers and drives sales. We have seen a high degree of interest and orders."

The flood of ICT companies looking to cash in on the goodwill of the 2016 Rio Olympics and Paralympics includes Vodacom Lesotho which is sponsoring 11 smartphones and Tablets, loaded with data and airtime for athletes and officials for Lesotho's National Olympic Team.

Safaricom in Kenya has also announced an award of Sh5 million and Sh900,000 worth of airtime to Kenya's Paralympic team that will represent the country at the Rio 2016 Paralympics from the 7 - 18 September.

Makings of a successful tech sponsorship

Dave Duarte, social business and digital marketing consultant at Treeshake says sports sponsorship is generally about performance, an attribute many technology companies want to underline - and sports offers many avenues to do this.

"The key to an effective sponsorship is linking an attribute that the athlete embodies to an attribute the brand wants to emphasise. So for example, the brand wants to emphasise its speed, so it sponsors the fastest man on earth. As long as the product delivers on this values-promise, the sponsorship can be highly effective and authentically beneficial. Ideally technology companies should go beyond slapping their logo on the athlete's kit, and give sports fans access to unique content. Give us data we couldn't get otherwise, share behind the scenes insight on social media, and create ads featuring the athlete that emphasise your brand value in a way that inspires the fans too."