Lawkoster with the most crazy marketing

The airline mocks the "aching" passengers and ridicules them for poverty and stupidity. And this is not a "victory"

Which is better: customers love you, but you incur losses or hate you, but you are the largest company? In the early 1990s, Ryanair changed the strategy and in several years became one of the largest air carriers in the world. In the past few years, the company has been actively mastering social networks - in this they have been helped by “aching millennials”. "Cold" tells the history of the airline, which captured the market with the help of terrible tariffs and impudent memes.

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The first low -cost airline in Europe

In 1984, three Irish businessmen - Tony Ryan, Christopher Ryan and Liam Lonergan - founded a small airline with a team of 25 people. In the first few years, Ryanair was known for a good service - for example, when delaying flights, passengers distributed free food and drinks. True, the business was not successful - the company brought only losses. In 1988, in order to save the situation, to lead Ryanair set the financial consultant Michael O'Lii.

Soon after his appointment, O'Liri flew to Texas to find out how Southwest Airlines earned, selling cheap tickets. There he found out that Southwest Airlines chose small airports for work, which offered low landing prices, and distributed peanuts on board instead of a full dinner. O'liri realized : there is a future for such a strategy. Under his leadership, Ryanair was restarted as "the first airline with low tariffs in Europe."

Now Ryanair prices start at 14 pounds (about 1600 rubles) and are considered one of the lowest in the world. But they are compensated by high tariffs for baggage, as well as prices for drinks and food on board. There are no business classes in the airline airline, and the chairs are small and are as close to each other as possible. For the choice of a place and sitting with a large space for the legs, you will also have to pay separately. On such additional options, Ryanair earns almost four billion dollars a year.

At the same time, reducing expenses, in Ryanair went even further than Southwest. For example, to launch the Ryanair website - a airline with a turnover of billions of dollars - hired two students.

Bright ideas

Having rebuilt the company, O'liri came up with her new public image. CEO began to act with vivid statements, which often became the reason for discussing and publications in the media.

For example, he called delirium norms for greenhouse gas emissions, proposed “shooting ecologists” and discussed the possibility of a paid toilet aboard. He also owns other scandalous initiatives: for example, add a paid video player to watch porn during the flight to the airline and introduce a “fat tax” for customers, due to the weight of which “more fuel is spent”. Another idea is to make standing seats in airplanes in order to increase the price for sitting.

In 2012, one of the passengers paid the airline 300 euros for the printout of the five landing coupons for a flight and asked to compensate for these costs. To which O'Liri replied that the passenger herself had to pay the company 60 euros for such stupidity. “People say that the client is always right, but you know what is not so. Sometimes they are wrong, and they need to say about it, ”he said .

O'liri does not hide that everything he says is part of the marketing with which the company receives free coverage: "All that needs to be done is to raise the noise."

Memes in service

Until 2009, Ryanair avoided social networks, and when she brought accounts in them, she was no different from competitors. But in 2021, the company hired 36-year-old Michael Korkoran as head of the SMM department. As a child, he dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, but graduated from the Dublin business school and settled on marketing. Before Ryanair, Corcoran worked as the head of the SMM at the Paddy Power Betfair bookmaker. After he arrived at the airline, he was able to restart the Ryanair social networks - under his leadership, the team began to use the tone set by O'LIRI.

For example, when the client flying on the honeymoon, complained about the lack of a window at his place, on Twitter Ryanair replied that his wife regrets that she married a person who could not read a small print.

Now Ryanair has 2.2 million subscribers in Tiktock , 1.4 million on Instagram and 822 thousand on Twitter . The company allocates about $ 20 million for marketing per year. And also, as O'liri says , “allows you to say and do anything” - the leaders do not care who they “offend, scold, insult or tease” on social networks. However, there are still forbidden topics for the Ryanair social networks: Sammshchikov is asked not to joke about discrimination and violence, as well as refrain from memes on the security of flights.

In his position, Corcoran began to work with the “biggest problem” Ryanair - “aching millennials” (Corcoran and Millennial itself). In his opinion, Boomer and Zumers calmly use cheap flights, but millennials “expect heating seats, USB chargers and TV screens in a 40-minute flight” and, buying tickets, do not read the conditions.

The airlines began to make fun of the negative from such customers and turn criticism in their favor, gathering likes on acute answers.

One of the striking examples of this approach is the story around the 11a chair. On board the Boeing 737–800 that Ryanair uses, there is a place next to which there is no porthole. This was reported on the site, but customers often miss warnings, and then complain on social networks. Ryanair responded to the discontent of one of these buyers with a photo collage.

The answer was encouraged and a separate twitter account was even opened .

Another passenger paid for a place by the window, but she got the seat next to the evacuation exit. Having complained to Twitter and attaching a photograph of her place, she received in response to her photo with a circled hole in the wall. The company's response was in the popular evening show Jimmy Fallon.

"The most frantic"

The head of the SMM Korcoran said that Ryanair carefully monitor the covers of posts and delete publications if they have not gained the right number of reactions.

The company often uses situational marketing and popular people.

And when a video appeared in social networks in which the British comedian James Korden rudely communicates with the restaurant staff, the airline forbade him to fly her flights. Twitter users picked up this flash mob and began to massively prohibit the comedian with everything that was possible. For example, one of the users forbade him to watch his TV, others-to enter his YouTube channel , onlifans and the Minecraft gameserver .

When the promotion team is risk, she is sure that lawyers will support her.

Moreover, some jokes are perceived ambiguously. For example, in social networks they criticized the Ryanair viral post , in which the government warning about the threat of Covid is compared with the level of parties to Dauning Street (there are residences of members of the UK Government). Another viral tweet of Prince William Ryanair deleted after the Kensington Palace complained about him.

In posts, the company Michael O'LIRI sometimes appears, sometimes in rather unexpected circumstances. For example, when Brussels ecologists arranged an action and threw a cake in his face, the Ryanair team immediately responded to this with a joke on Twitter.

In mid -2023, the head of the Ryanair SMM Michael Korkoran said that the purpose of the Ryanair team is to become the most discussed brand on social networks. It seems that the company succeeded. At the beginning of 2024, The Washington Post called the Ryanair profile on Twitter the "most frantic" among all airlines.

“The funniest thing we have learned over the years is that in fact, poor advertising sells much more places than good,” says O'liri. In his opinion, this encourages people to look for a company and discover low prices.

Whether the company will be able to keep attention or users of social networks will tire witty, but rather aggressive jokes is unknown. At the end of 2023, the head of the SMM department, Michael Korcoran left Ryanair and opened the Frankly agency. The reason, according to him, was the “toxic corporate culture” of the company. Following Korkoran, five people left his department, with which they achieved eight billion coverage. In total, 70 people work on social networks of the company. Who will take the place of the head of SMM in Ryanair is not yet specified.