More often than not, silence is never the best option when it comes to company gaffes.

A holding statement acknowledging an issue is good, it shows empathy and action. The next step is to establish the facts of the scenario and to make a further, timely response when these are established. Read More »

Twitter held an event yesterday that highlighted once again the importance of finding your voice on Twitter. I’ve written about this a number of times. At Powered by Tweets, the issue was brought to life by professional Tweeter David Levin who, among other things, is the voice of the Dolphin pub in London’s Hackney. He also works for brands such as Adidas among others, but really came to prominence recently for what has become known as, “possibly the greatest conversation on Twitter ever”. Read More »

Controversial low-cost airline Ryanair’s negative attitude to all aspects of digital except ticket sales is a fast track to creating a socially toxic brand on a global scale.

One story in the past couple of weeks has leapt out as a case study for brands in how not to act in social media. It tells of a brand sticking its fingers in its ears and refusing to be told or to listen.

No surprise that the brand in question is everybody’s favourite budget airline, Ryanair. Read More »

Apparently never one to miss an own goal Ryanair chief executive, Michael O’Leary, has called the woman who racked up 560,000 likes, for her Facebook post about excessive charges, an idiot.

After being charged €300 by Ryanair for printing six boarding passes Suzy McLeod  posted on Facebook asking people to like her post if they thought the charges were unfair.

And like it they did. In a couple of days she had more than 350,000 likes. That has now risen to more than 500,000. O’Leary though is unimpressed and he laid into the woman at a press conference yesterday. Read More »

UPDATE: There seems an almost inexhaustible supply of people wanting to share their unhappiness with Ryanair. The number of Facebook likes now stands at more than 387,000 and comments at 19,475.

TUESDAY - Ryanair is a brand that barely exists in social media, but it is one that is possibly one of the most talked about. Certainly in the UK and Ireland.

The story of a woman who was charged €300 by Ryanair for printing six boarding passes, and won the support of more than 357,000 users after she posted on Facebook in just five days, is a prime example of that.

But what of Rynair’s response in social channels? Absolutely nothing, not a peep, it chooses not to engage and acts like an analogue rather than a digital brand. It begs the question is Ryanair a socially toxic (but successful) brand? Read More »

Is it impossible for some kinds of companies to have a good online reputation?

I’m minded to ask after reading about some new research into online reputation – specifically looking at how certain UK brands were written about in online news sites and online social media sites. Read More »

Once upon a time in Ireland, if you earned your living as a writer, you didn’t have to pay income tax. What a great way to encourage a creative culture, from the country that brought you Joyce, Behan, Yeats and Samuel Beckett. Now WPP is moving to Ireland to take advantage of the tax conditions.

Is the Irish government encouraging creative accounting as well? Of course it’s not so simple. WPP is a holding company with hundreds of entities serving a variety of distributed client contracts around the world. It is, on one level, a British ‘success story’.

As the Goverment launches its ‘Creative Britain’ campaign, it seems ironic that one of the major firms that capitalises on creative talent should be fleeing the country. I wonder if they’ll all fly Ryanair.