Monday 2 March 2009

Ryanair wage war on blogosphere

Just had this article brought to my attention. It concerns Ryanair's approach to a blogger's comment about their website. It's a good story because it contains a sort of double reveal.

First theres the ridiculously pumped up Ryanair IT technician, who swoops on the post, accuses the blogger of being "an idiot and a liar", proceeds to attack his web development credentials and finally produces some weird semi-threat (see picture) which centres around giving away a million free Ryanair flights.


Undiplomatic backoffice staff member starts slinging insults around on the blogosphere; this is where you'd expect the comms department to wade in, issuing some sort of humble apology to quell the impending swell of blogo-rage. Right?

Wrong. In a statement released to Travalution a spokesperson for Ryanair said:

Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won't be happening again.

Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel.

So theres our second reveal - Ryanair do actually hate bloggers. Naturally, elements within the blogosphere have taken exception, calling Ryanair's statement "woeful", and threatening never to fly with the airline again. But despite the limited ire caused by Ryanair's statement, I don't think it is the worst thing the company could have said.



At least they're crystal clear about their online strategy. A large number of neo-PR types would balk at the idea of taking on the internet in a PR war. But I don't think its so desperately crazy to conceive of a communications approach that not only attempts to isolate the inhabitants of the blogosphere (see picture above), but resolves to take a dump on them as well. Research has shown that bloggers are not trusted (except by other bloggers). They have a reputation as self absorbed timewasters and it is beyond debate that the 'blogosphere' contains some of the most pointless fluff ever committed to type.

Whereas some businesses might have a lot to gain from getting into bed with these self appointed guardians of the internet, many might just as reasonably conclude that associating with bloggers is so counterproductive that the best strategy is to ignore them or, should they get narky with you or your staff, sling faeces from a distance.

I think Ryanair have judged their target market well. As a customer looking for a cheap flight, I would indeed prefer that Ryanair staff were "driving down the cost of air travel" (whatever that physically involves) than taking part in virtual love-ins on wordpress, blogger and the like. I'd take comfort in Ryanair's focus and their everyman contempt for the loudmouth internet nobody.

But while I've got some admiration for the sentiment of the release, I do feel it could have been written a bit more better. Comms staff really needed to offset the clumsy beligerence of the original blog postings, and I'm not sure they managed to do that. Words like "idiot" are a bit harsh to be used in a press release. "Lunatic" I quite like though. Even though it masks hundreds of years of mistreatment of the mentally ill, I'd generally consider it an affectionate term and one with considerable PR purchase.

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