Marketing the Ryanair way

Ryanair....not all people like the airline, but they are doing a nice (online) marketing job if you look it from their perspective. It is thinking in a different way, not the standard brand awareness, viral's and GRP's or the standard social approach. They produce emails and advertisements without agency's so very cheap, but also they make them fun. And "fun" works. Just like in the online world. Fun goes viral = reach.

However how is Ryanair going to stand in these web 3.0. times? The times where people expect webcare, and the use of twitter or facebook?

I think they will do fine, as long as their prices continue to be low. As long as it is possible to fly around Europe for an average of 50 euro's people will keep on flying Ryanair.

They can do a much better job, I think, by at least use social sharing buttons at their website (I think the low fares will be shared massive) and also implement these buttons in their e-mails and  by making more fun , viral advertisements and publicity that can be shared. If I were Ryanair, would have used their own website or at least one maintained by Ryanair to do so. And this can be done cheaply as well :) By the use of wordpress.

Just got an e-mail today from Ryanair. Even their e-mails look cheap. A mix of Dutch and English in one e-mail.
Ryanair E-mail marketing
And if I click on the "click here" in the english part, I am redirected to a Dutch landing page:

Ryanair e-mail landingpage

Michael O' Leary was invited for speaking at the Innovation Convention in Brussels:

There is a ban on low cost carriers for civil servants of the European Commission! Michael O'Leary tells. 





Free PR


Another great story! I bet they sold a whole lot of extra scratch cards! They just have to make sure that their Ryanair customers know about this "possible" error.

Three people win cars on a 'lucky' Ryanair flight
April 27, 2011 5:00 PM
Three lucky passengers flying from Milan to Madrid have each independently won cars worth £11,500 by playing an in-flight scratchcard game.

After the cards had been bought, a cheer is said to have gone up in the cabin as one player realised they'd won… and then another… and another.

But the flight was less fortunate for airline Ryanair - which sells the €2 scratchcards - because they normally only releases one free car into the game each month.

Despite being shocked and blaming the treble win on a 'printing error' they've said they will honour the winning cards… and any more which crop up.

You see they've hinted that there could be more errors, and therefore more winners, in the current print run of cards which are due to be used up to the end of June.
Ryanair’s Daniel de Carvalho said: "Ryanair and Brandforce (the company which runs our €2 scratchcard game) have launched an enquiry into how this printing error caused 3 €13,000 cars to be won on one flight.

"We remain concerned that this print run – which covers €2 scratchcards up to the end of June – may contain further print errors leading to an unexpected ratio of car winners forRyanair passengers playing our €2 scratchcard game.

"Both Ryanair and Brandforce have confirmed that they will honour all car winners regardless of how many crop up between now and the end of June and we will sort out our losses with Brandforce at the end of this print run."

I'll bet these kind of news articles, will be shared via social media a lot!



Plain Painting


They often paint their planes with "Bye Bye <airline name> when they start flying at an airport. In this case, bye bye Alitalia..:)



Ryanair has a very fun song, when you are in the air, telling you to buy things. This song is very popular at youtube as well. The original song, watched more then 87.000 times can be seen here. But also people post their own video's with this song. And that's when it get's fun..

See this person below, with his own dance at this Ryanair song, he has a video that has been watched more then 45439 times. And the person has fun. Flying with Ryanair is fun.




This figure from Google Insights, shows that Ryanair is searched for much more times then it's competitor Easyjet. I'll bet it has something to do with all of the PR and funny advertisements.



Ryanair is also the only e-commerce website, where I noticed "Adsense" ad's during the booking process to get extra revenue. The only philosofy behind that, can be that Ryanair is the cheapest anyway, so they get back to the Ryanair website after clicking on such an ad.

Ryanair places Adsense Ads on the right of the booking process 


Some pictures of Ryanair's CEO




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