Meet The Marketing Genius Who Saved Ryanair

do you get a call from prince Andrew we get a call from Kensington Palace Michael what are we doing what are you talking about um that's Michael cor the viral Mastermind behind ryion air Tik tok's number one airline in this episode Michael reveals the social strategy that took them from Zer to 2 million followers we could have potentially reached up to five or 6 billion people it's mind blown it's nearly the world the number one thing everyone gets wrong about social media I don't care what anybody says if you don't Factor these two in first you're going to lose in the platforms the main two reasons people go to social media one is to be entertained M and two is to get away from the show that's going on in their lives how to go viral every single time and everyone especially corporate brands are doing it so so wrong they end up trying to Target too many different cohorts and different people on the same feed all the time you need to piss off the 80% to win the 20% rer got canceled all the time so it's nothing new we were okay with that and loads more were you fired from right this is an absolute marketing Master Class if you care at all about social media you're not going to want to miss [Music] this hey guys if you get value and enjoy this podcast Please Subscribe and let me know what you think in the comments let's dive in Michael I'm super excited to have you on I've heard a lot of people talk about brand lot of people talk about social but few people talk with the enthusiasm um that you do and it's infectious and you've got a great background working agency side with Brands like uh Guinness and then in-house with the likes of Patty power bet fair but I want to kind of start this conversation around your time most recently at Ryan a where the work you did is incredible like in terms of changing the perception of a brand just the sheer scale of it generating 2 billion in organic reach in in just 18 months in- house pure organic no paid spend I think it's phenomenal and I think there's so much that people can learn from it and just your whole approach to social so I'd love to start with how did you get the job up R now geez that's a big intro and big pressure I better know hype myself up I thank God you better deliver I've had a lot of caffeine which is good H how did I get the job um well funny story um I'm time in bford things were kind of starting to make changes in the industry where there was a lot of mergers happening within the business and I was in a global head of role at the time so would have been responsible for all things social media for the bed Fair brand not Patty par I could never take credit for that there was somebody else who did a super job on that side of things I was working for the more premium vanilla brand H but the the rest structures were happening Global roles were no longer they were dividing making divisions and sadly my role was no longer there so I got a beautiful golden handshake and I walked out the door now one I I was kind of at a crosss figuring out what to do and I wasn't sure but I said I had I had no there was no panic because the golden handshake gave me a bit of a comfort blanket for a few months to figure my [ __ ] out uh eventually a role came up for head of social media Ro to Ryan a I said okay as a business I feel its tone its style its language is something I like uh Michael earlier as a CEO is probably um one of those Heroes a lot of young people and young entrepreneurs that have in the Irish Market because love him or hate him love him or hate Ryan Air what he has built is an absolute Beast so the Curiosity of wanting to step foot in the building of where he works was really really attractive long story short I got an interview the interview lasted about 30 minutes didn't really go through my CV much because my CV was my CV you could look at it you could read it you could call anybody you wanted and try and back up whether I I was telling the truth or not we just had some rough conversations kind of I talked about how I was intrigued by the no [ __ ] attitude of the brand um about the business and uh kind of it was more of a was like a cultural fit tonally for within 30 minutes the interview was done I got a a call the next day that there was enough on the table and the rest is history so when you think about getting rolls especially rolls as big as this you go through these laborious interview processes like you talk about meta and the likes they take you through the absolute rinse or 10 12 interviews um to try and even get through the front door let alone a job but yeah again even that set the Benchmark for me that okay these guys don't mess up around they get [ __ ] done they get it done fast and done is better than perfect yeah and when you come into Ryan Air what is the social strategy or the plan there is no plan yeah there was no plan there wasn't any there and again it was partly because it was the just coming through the afterma of Co so the team was quite fragmented dismantled I think a couple of people left at the time going on to new great things and they were doing okay things across Ross all platforms but it was very like for like with other airlines however they had this one shiny new toe which was Tick Tock MH and again there was two people in there at the time who were kind of taking it on the crest of a wave and got in there early they had time to play with it figure it out they had permission to figure it out and play with it because nobody knew what it was because Co was happening they had nothing else to do and they found this sweet spot on the platforms and that was starting to grow and grow and grow as I entered so I spent 6 months kind of looking up serving get a l the land figuring out how I could actually deliver on this I had time to put a strategy together which I presented to the business no complaints no issues it it was it was obvious in what we needed to do but it just needed to be documented and shap put on it and a focus and a set of steps about how we get from where we are now to where we need to get to next and then the rebuild happened so once the strategy was in place then I started to rebuild a team that could actually execute on the strategy and then through iterations development processes we eventually got our Rhythm and our execution our road map there was a couple of big moments that happened and the rest is history yeah but what's the kind of perception that you're trying to change because I think it's a really interesting brand in terms of the the customer cool let's let's break let's break down the strategy how about we break it down yeah let's do it let's do it so when I went in um like normally when I I I approach strategy and again I'm I'm a big believer in developing strategy I'm only the best strategist mhm probably not and have a lot to learn but I try to distill it down to a simple framework uh and we need to identify a problem a gap or an opportunity and trying develop a set of decisions guiding principles to get us from where we are now to where we want to be next but before that you need to identify what the hell the problems are and like again you'd assume R A have many based on perception so with the Insight you gather I based it on brand category customer and the social media landscape and I try to identify an Insider prop or an opportunity across all four that I could distill down and see where were the intersections across all of those and where was the intersection within the social media landscape that it could potentially solve now the big areas around that from Brand point of view we had a DNA of being a disruptor MH um like us or not rin a disrupted Aviation for people who aren't aware and if you're too young look at you I'm way too old so I do know is that in 1985 Ryan Air came to the market and at that time British Airways and airling and all the other national flag carriers were charging you through the nose about three or 400 for a short ha flight R air came in exploded killed the category flights became 50 we democratized travel we made it accessible for everyone not only were they a disruptor in the industry from a Communications point of view it's always been within the Brand's DNA again if you're not familiar with some of the advertising of old rire has always been a very provocative irreverent brand and very self-deprecating about itself they like rer knows what it is it's a point too Airline a commodity and that came true in the advertising more importantly it came true in the pr and PR was such a big big lever for Ryan a at the time and Michael O as CEO was the front and face of that and he did an exceptional job he was polarizing he was Marmite but he got attention and a publicity for nothing all the time yeah like the pant use the toilet Etc ET and that's a video from nearly 10 years ago and it keeps getting resurfaced and resurfaced and resurfaced but he knew what to do so we took a lot of learning from that and that became our we still it down to our DNA as a disruptor and our tone of voice was a superpower it was a point of difference within the category and probably a point of difference on social as a whole then within the category like other airlines are trying to be the same they're trying to be this perfect premium experience lowc cost high cost are all trying to be the same where at the end of the day they're just big metal machines in the sky and very few people can travel first class so it's all the same and that even translate to social as well all old their content is about these fake filtered destination perfectly Polished pictures of cin crew and pilots and trying to make a sweaty box in the air a luxury which it's not no so we needed to find what's our what's our way that we can stand out from the crowd on the platforms how can we be true to ourselves as a lowcost airline and you know stand out from other other brands and other o other airlines within the category on social then you've got customer and this is probably where most of the strategy hung its hat on because again you need most of it is about solving customer problems there's a perception change that needed to be shifted what we saw through Insight through our our surveys was that the expectations of traveling low cost are way too high and that's kind of played out predominantly with the millennial generation the the Silver Spoon people who are the privileged and born with too much luxury than any other I guess generation that's been out there and I and explain why like the the older generation who were were I guess democrati ized um with r a and they were given the opportunity to travel for for cheap don't have a problem with RH a they know exactly what the product is and the transaction is probably let them go to Spain two times a year for the last 20 years and they they have no problems do they do they do they experience problems from time to time yes but they understand the tradeoff then you have the younger generation the genz who are just they've got no money but they want experiences and if they want to get on a flight to to Italy today and go have pizza for a Fiverr and fly back to same day they can do that R air for a tener why because they can they're young free and they're full of energy it's the people in the middle who have had the biggest problem for many years that their expectations they want heated M Massage they want us speed Chargers on a tenure flight to Malaga you know and it's absolutely nuts they don't understand what they're getting and we needed to try and unpack and solve that problem about change that perception and then the last one is the landscape itself and everyone especially corporate brands are doing it so so wrong it's this corporate fake filtered see of same as [ __ ] on news feeds from time to time again and in most cases they're actually competing with themselves before they even compete with anybody else with the mixed messages especially when it comes to organic and they end up trying to Target too many different cohorts and different people on the same feed all the time and what it ends up doing is cannibalizing itself on the platforms but it just becomes this wallpaper that nobody wants to engage it and they're not understanding the real motivations of why we go to Social and I boil it down to and I I don't care what anybody says if you don't Factor these two in first you're going to lose in the platforms the main two reasons people go to social media one is to be entertained and two is to get away from the [ __ ] show that's going on in their lives whether that's their job craziness of being a parent the the stress of being in college are just been broke um or even terrified of what's going on in the world those small bursts between their their chaotic and and annoying days is that little little bit of escapism they look for on the platforms and if we're not even trying to cater to that we're failing because it's we're all trying to deliver passive content and there is a place for Passive content there's a place for YouTube there's a place for podcast where people stop and engage and choose to go to binge in those moments but for the majority of it it's small bursts throughout your day to try and get that bit of Serotonin and happiness shock entertainment feel something yeah um that we brands do a really [ __ ] job of so pulling all these together we started to identify three problems we needed lowcost High return reach because we're a lowcost airline and we felt our ton of voice could be a way to accelerate that from organic point of view we needed a point of difference in the category because of the Cs so we needed to stand out from our other competitors and a way that generated top of Mind awareness and then we needed to shift the perception of people's expectations of trafficing low cost in particularly Ryan Air and especially the first world problems that they would not naturally play out on social why because normally when people complain or they have a problem they will go to social media and they'll put it out there to try and get a bit of attention from that brand to try and solve that problem but in most cases they are first world problems that people simply didn't read the terms and conditions or don't understand what they're paying for they probably do but again they're too privileged so from so we we we took that those problems and then we we we shaped it to articulate it into a strategy and it was built on a mission a vision an articulation of strategy and guiding principles our mission was to be the most talked about brand on social media again with missions they need to be wafty they need to be this nth star that it's within Arms Reach but you just can't get it which means that everything you do you strive to get it you iterate you improve you may never get there again we could maybe say we we might have got there when we we saw Jimmy Kimmel doing a cold opening with one of our pieces of content on us television which is mindblowing yeah mindblowing but it has to be reachable but not attainable and it's forever within your grasp and you need to chase it all the time and that just sets appetite it sets a I I guess a direction to try and improve and iterate all the time then you take it down to Vision vision is more of an idealized uh articulation of the problem you're trying to solve um and with that is we wanted to create content that was so entertaining that people would share it on and off social media why is that social media winning there is one thing but if you deliver content that I I guess evokes an emotion regardless of what it is it tends to break through the wall of social into the the the WhatsApp conversation of of the groups you're in dark messaging is such a big space that if you can break from social into there you're going to reach far more people we also wanted the memes accounts the the the the red tabloids to be taking our content and writing articles about it generating more earned reach feeding in to solve the problem of of getting as much top of Mind awareness as we can for as little money as we possibly can so those two set on top of the house and then the strategy itself was to create a Creator Le approach that delivered two levers one was relevant topical content impulsive news jacking the other was around always on solving the problems of perception for the business and those two levers worked together one was an accelerant of getting as much eyeballs as possible for that lowcost top of Mind awareness the Timeless TRS of marketing mental availability um but it also offered an opportunity on social because I I'll call it out if people on in Social as an expert try to convince you that they know how the algorithms Works they're full of [ __ ] [ __ ] nobody knows not even the algorithm the computer doesn't even know itself how it works but what you can you can tell is that if a piece of content gets traction it sends some sort of a signal somewhere that this is good and the the rest of the internet might want to see it yeah and it carries and pushes it to low engage users so but by using reactive content and news tracking it allowed us to grab the attention of a small pool of high engage users that immediately engaged with it that then carried it further and we started to reach more and more low engage users getting as much reach as possible now why is that important in the basics it's it's good for top of Mind awareness but also gives us an opportunity for the rest of our content because what happens is when that content goes out and the low engage users see it they go hey I like this either they watch it or they interact with it it sends some sort of signal to go okay you watch this you like this the machine now is going to give you more content like this it could be from the same account or could be from other accounts but in the same area of topic but we're now going to see do you want more of this content and what that gave us an opportunity was every time we went out with with high reaching content across our platforms it gave us an opportunity for the always on content to follow up and try and land our messages effectively but it also had to be equally entertaining and had to be done in a very specific way to do the same work that the reactive content was doing and we we were calling and again I I I stole this from someone I can't even remember who told who said it to me it was like a jab jab hook yeah yeah jab jab right hook that's it exactly the Right Hook was landed we got lots of reach and then we started to jab away the always on content and what that allowed to do aside from building Fame and entertainment and become a brand that people talked about uh we started to build the foundations of our reach over time we also then started to place in those perception change messages around the lowc cost model uh the first world problems of traveling low cost you know relatable content about travel as a whole that is um that people would find entertaining and funny and H it started to build a base and it started to change a shift now a couple of things happened our Baseline reach Grew From what was on average I think 5 million impressions on an average week which is really really good from an organic point of view to averaging 30 million per week in 18 months we delivered and what we we we can only quantify is 2 billion Impressions over an 18mon period and that isn't including any earned media that press wrote about us the meme accounts like the Arch Bishop of bran British memes are taking our content all the time so if you used all ad terms or all PR terms things to say like if you got a mention in in a newspaper or um an image in a newspaper it was where three times the advertising value or the reach of that paper so if you multiply that by three we could have potentially reached up to five or six billion people yeah it's mind blown it's nearly the world but again it's not we know how Impressions work we know region Impressions and measurement can be flawed sometimes but it just we we had impact the other thing it did as well was that it actually started to change the perception of passengers and it it did it in a couple of ways people were were understanding the model more from the content we were providing but what was interesting that that happened was we actually started to unearth Advocates of Rin a fans of ryion Aire yeah because normally if you fly with Ryan a you get from A to B on as close to time as possible for as little as possible however we just did our job you people don't need to go on to the internet and sing our praise again Roy Kean is I'm a big fan of Roy keen and he had this saying about the postman if the postman Del your letters you don't open the door every morning give him a big hug on the high five and go hey mate you smash it you're the best [ __ ] Postman ever you delivered you always deliver you're the best Postman in the world no they don't because he just did his job and that's what Ryan Air is for so many people 90% plus people just get made to be and they go about their day but what happened on social was they started to find the relatable content funny they started to Def find the word first world problems entertaining and funny they started to find an understanding almost like a humble brag that they know the R Air Model um and they're okay with it yeah and what had happened then was two years ago the common sections of the r air CS are absolute vial everybody hated Rin air it was a it was a it was septic toxic we're the worst Airline ever but what the content started to do is as those people were commenting we had Advocates coming who knew the model who were triggered and who we grabbed their attention H found an entertaining and saw the comments they started to fight our Corner they started to become a going hey you didn't read the terms and conditions what do you not understand about R A you probably got that flight for a tener why are you complaining and this started to bubble and bubble and bubble and as that happened even the sentiment changed and that's even antidotal on the platforms but we actually plugged it into our brand surveys and in our brand surveys we put questions in around you know likeness to the brand I would prefer to say hate rer less but uh what are the the the things that make you like the brand more and social was one of the options within that question in the survey and we move from having two and 10 people like the brand because of social in the first quarter we checked it to two quarters later the four or five at that time it was two liked two didn't and you'll always have detractors every brand or business will have somebody who will have a bad experience somebody who will have a bad moment and that's just how business works you know things happen and then we had was it six people who are passive and we went there's a big opportunity if we can shift as many of those passive people to like us more to to to our content we can shift the perception of the brand we can make people more acceptable to the model and as I keep saying hate r a less yeah it's it's amazing isn't it it's just it's it's such a brilliant story and um I think the the the the people in the comments fighting back that's something you hear a lot with creators in their content because people are like they just feel a connection they feel like at least this person's real um and there was an important thing about that to make it feel really too and something I forgot us was explaining the strategy with the landscape as well like there's a huge shift from the fake fil their polish premium nature of social media that Instagram corporate Brands influencers had created this really um you know fake bubble that Tik Tok was the antidote to that it became this comfort blanket for the internet but also the the rise of gen Z being okay with imperfection being themselves uh even dark humor and you know being okay with being I guess a different started to come true and we learned a lot from when when Tik Tok started to grow us we learned a lot from that and we we made sure in the Creator approach which was the strategy that we we made our content so low so entertaining the art Direction was purposely made to make our content look so bad it looked like it was made by an average person on their phone but there was another signal behind that which was interesting too because we're a lowcost airline everything the business obsessed about is the is the operation model and we made our content look so low as well exact so people think we don't give a [ __ ] about our marketing because all we care about is is is is getting the planes up and down the air as safely as possible for as slow as possible yeah yeah um it's amazing let's talk about let's break it down into the actual nitty-gritty of the week to week and the two types of content you've got there you've got the always on which is the more planned stuff it' be interesting to get into how you actually plan that and make sure that it's it's uh it's performing and the process to get it performing um organically and then the other side which I think is super interesting is the reactive which a lot of people will think they want to do but they feel uncomfortable um especially with the way that you executed it slight definitely out there um how do you how do you kind of manage both of those so so let's start with a caveat that rire are an exception and they're not the norm when it comes to using social media the fear I have at the moment is because we built such a big monster that CMOS and marketing people in a room going we want to be more like air and I'm like you can be but you have to be yourselves you know tonally we were ourselves because that's within our DNA and we took a very polarizing approach which our CEO and others have done so it should have been no surprise so we are the exception of the norm but you what you can learn is what we're going to talk about now is is how we set up our team after devising a very good strategy um and how we operationally delivered the work so let's start with reactive first so with within the two levers of the strategy the the the news tracking and the always on we actually divided our team into two we have a team of eight people including myself and in that we we had a reactive and Community team it does what it says in the tin they were the news jackers they were the guys who were discovering across the internet what are the moments or opportunities that we could tap into or lean in on that could actually drive extra Fame and get us extra reach like that and we put that in Discovery checks in place where we you use tools on Twitter Reddit and other places to try and find what is about the trend or what's happening in the news that we can insert ourselves into and in that then they would have had daily checks where we would have chat viment at you know certain processes that would allow us to um you know condition the team to to win as many times as possible and when it comes to reactive it's literally it at first it is keep on trying until it works and then as you get better you start to condition and craft your copy craft your moments intersect yourself into you know subcultures become famili familar or you know known for this type of content because what happens with a lot of brands are trying to do it now that have one moment of failure they'll have one negative experience and they'll never do it again yeah and there's a couple things with that as well is like what you need to do is get past the echo chambers of negativity because no matter what you say or do or when you try to in inject yourself into something that you're not normally known for or show up for you're going to be met with with push back uh you're going to be met with negativity because social media is just full of it and you've got to be okay with people not liking your brand people not liking the content that's okay because that's what social is and you need to break past that wall and even our team experienced that too because you know at first when we start to intersect into current affairs and we had a lot of negative feedback about how we were approaching the Tory party and others you know it was a really really vitall but we explained why we're showing up we're explained the purpose of it and as we got better in time they started to compartmentalize the the things they needed to focus on because they knew what we were trying to achieve now in those Discovery checks we were then um devis this process where when we did our Discovery checks we provided a list of opportunities across the internet would have been a a topic in one liner the link to the source of the content and a potential starter idea and that would drop into our team chat and group with the guys them with tissue we would take things that we thought were the strongest Runners and we would put five minutes on the clock cuz timing is everything reactive if you're too slow and you've got to go through layers and layers of approval and processes it's not going to work you're going to be too late so timing is everything even if the idea is okay or a bit flat if you get out before everybody else and people interact early it's going to carry you're going to do something you win exactly and that was really important with us so we created a a rule that five minutes on the clock with a concept if you can't concept it and you can't get it to the point where it's ready for approval it's not it's not going to go out and it's we go on to our next one so we again let's we call it the shot clock and essentially we we we used the shot clock as the method to try and accelerate faster at first it wasn't great we took time it took practice but people got better and as people got better with Discovery they also got better with identifying the op the concept as they were discovering so by the time it got into the the clock and into the the chat that put the the time on the clock it meant that they were already half cooked ideas and we were getting better and better and better we spotted our opportunity we went with it and the approval was very simple I was the approver we had this policy in place in the business where here's where our dos and don'ts once we played within that we didn't have to go higher so the the the ceiling was me and we know that we had a privilege of having that layer of approv where most people don't they've got to go to Legal their CMO sometimes up to their CEO and by the time it happens it's gone it's gone yeah wa too late so we go out we we five minutes on the clock we we we keep on doing we iterate if it worked great we celebrate if it didn't we run off into the sunset and we hide um and like in most cases as we got better over time we actually started to remove content that didn't work to allow again this could be [ __ ] but allow the content that was working in a moment in time have as much opportunity to reach as many people's feeds as possible because again that is limited on the platforms so we just got better and better we became familiar and it just started to improve over time and what happened was people started to get conditioned even the quality of the the the wish the entertainment the one lers all improved at first we you could see if you look back and when we reflect we can see there were times where we were forcing jokes yeah still do well but we were we were starting to be critical about little nuances that could speed it up craft the copy better don't force the joke because the audience are smart enough people that they will connect the dot and the content just became better and better and better and better over time so that's reactive and let's just and just a couple questions there so when you say you've got a couple of times in the day do you literally have like 11:00 what was the morning story exactly yeah 3:00 a.m. and p.m. so first thing people come in they come in and the people responsible for that will do their Discovery so by by half 9:00 we would have our first batch of Discovery ready to go and what are they doing they just scrolling their Twitter for we would use say tweet Tech which is now called xtop Pro yeah and on that what we would done we would have filtered then our our um our feed into topics and niches so we would have breaking news clickbait headlines so again you can you know exactly what they are we'd had a filter digital creators we had Sports filters we had Music Entertainment pop culture so what that allowed us to do rather than Doom scrolling and trying to find something yeah which is a nightmare you primed we created hyperfocus teams where we could scroll through quicker pull out the information faster and put it on a quick list that people could actually use for so we distilled it as fast as we could but then other people who are a bit more proficient on Reddit were using that as an opportunity to find where are emerging mems emerging Trends because it normally happens there before it happens everywhere else so the guys responding signals there so we do that at uh early morning and then after lunch kind of two big bursts but then throughout the day that team were still responsible for doing ad hoc checks or if there was specific moments like prime minister questions on Wednesday at 12:00 they will be online Sky News would be there they you know there's going to be a banger exactly so something is always going to happen to Prime questions so they they created the conditioning and the other thing I forgot to say as well is that we made a commitment on the team that no matter what group you're in reactive are always on 50% of your time per week is dedicated to that field everything else obviously we have to manage campaigns work with others do reports other bits and Bobs training development things like that but you have to make sure that the entire unit 50% so that allowed the four people in that space to make sure that we always have people on the clock yeah so doing the discoveries keeping one eyee on always on it they were responsible they knew that they had the freedom and sounds like a great bloody job at the end of the day you're literally spot and reactive opportunties for most of your day but that's what we needed um then the other thing that I thought I think is a good one to do to to talk about as well is well how do you cultivate quick weight and creativity in that space well we created um an environment called The Cutting Room floor and The Cutting Room floor was essentially when you came into the team first rather than giving you a list of things that you can't do you can't talk about this you can't do that this is how the brand works this is how the brand speaks you've got blockers up for most people and some people can work good with perimeters that becomes a really good brief for some people creatively for some people it scares a [ __ ] of them I can't do anything so what can I do so we don't do that when people enter the team first we actually we say a couple of elements where we just play around with but we introduce them to The Cutting Room floor so they follow the same Discovery process they do the same things but they if they have a concept that they want to run it goes into The Cutting Room for no matter what it is how high risk low risk obviously things they know themselves where they have cop on they don't they don't talk about but it became the safe space to cultivate creativity without barriers and you know it it allowed people to push the boundaries get to the line or get over the line and get better at it time and time again and some of the stuff down there was absolutely ridiculous it would never see light a day but people became comfortable to just but they just sharing it in the chat in the chat and that was nobody else and no feedback there was no negativity no bad feedback on it but what ended up you have them in there for like a month two two months when whenever it's it's it's always on so if people just want to get it out of their system and there's an idea we know we can't but in here it's like the creativity foret I've heard people talk about just spray load it all out on the page exactly hopefully there might be something good in there and it just removes barriers and it allows them to push towards because again being a very provocative and disruptive brand you have to be on the line or a little bit over and you're never going to get there if you put too many blockers in place and what happened is people got better over time in that space and funly enough some of the content went in there we we actually started to mitigate and made some nuances that ended up going public but allowed them to get over the line or a little bit over that we were able to refine and pull it back to make it safer for us legally and from a it's getting canceled but Riner got canceled all the time so it's nothing new we were okay with that that it allowed them to to actually get better and craft faster um and it's it's a great example of how you can start conditioning creativity within the within a team and especially with reactive it has to be done with Pace yeah yeah you have to be better at your one liners you have to be better at your Encyclopedia of M knowledge you have to connect the dots and find shortcuts and cues to actually develop the content faster and there was other things who did around that as well to try and improve the speed of you know creating content as well then there's the always on there's the always on let's just very quickly last one on this reactive because there's I think there's aead of a lot of fun stories here maybe like touch on some examples where either it goes wrong or it goes right or do you get a call from prince Andrew hey guys hope you're enjoying the episode if you are I ask two things of you one let me know in the comments what I can help you with in 2024 and two if you would like to make amazing content and grow a podcast in 2024 everything you're watching or listening to is made by my agency 7x content.com check us out now let's get back into the episode uh no we get a call from Kensington Palace uh oh yes yes yes yes we we'll go do that one so um I I won't explain the content I'll let you maybe figure it out but if you Google Ryan a and Prince William you'll get to see what content was put out there um Prince William there was rumors at the time that he was known for a recreational activity that would would shock a lot of people yeah and we were like oh we have to talk about this but we can't talk about this how do we do it so that we went okay so how do we we we we come up with a concept that we know that the audience would get without saying it m so the guys devised they went to pce content we got one of our lovely um Airline chairs and for some reason one of the the armrests were sticking up just again we forgot to put it down we also then started crafting copy around um you know letting William know we saved him a seat and we just joined the Dos but before that went out which was the final piece of content um we actually started to put language in like Prince William and all these things and if we would have done that we were toast it was liable defamation so we we were able to strip it back to the point where it was could have been any sort of William it could have been like Josie it was their 40 win anniversary they contacted the RO our social media team and us could you put out a post for my husband William and going to surprise him with a holiday for our 40 win anniversary and just tell him we saved him a seat so whatever we put out there it could be interpreted in so many ways but we knew that the timing of it and when it went out the audience know exactly what would happen so anyway went out completely exploded there was nothing there that was a risk we we mitigated enough where legally or anything it wouldn't have been and it was you know really funny joke we got a call from the palace um telling us to take it down or we want a public apology and we're like at at the time it was the pr team where took the call and I got a call I was playing Fetch with my dog that evening [ __ ] and I get a call going Michael what have you doing I went what are you talking about um it was that oh yeah kenon palace called in the rest remove a tweet or they're looking for a public apology from our CEO or a statement to explain I went okay and I saidwell what you want to do I said well we we have to take it above and said okay see what they say and at this stage we got what we needed for it got loads of reach millions of Reach people were taking screenshots and sharing it and we said we know we're not going to apologize for it because we haven't done anything wrong there's nothing there that that connects the dots to what they're inferring we could have been talking about Josie and WIlliams 40 anniversary uh which we were yeah by the way I know this is being recorded So we were um so they were like I just take it down and yeah okay let's do it so we deleted it so we called them we said we take it down they're like oh thank you very much see you later but um yeah there there's loads of other examples around you know how we got better with creative and funny enough it's it's another Royal story I swear we weren't going after the royal family all the time it's normally the Tories too um but essentially Jen sanch and Jordan sanche we'll get to that one too because I think there's really good learnings from that as well um with the red circle probably it's our most height performing piece of content I think we we we ever did and it was at a at a strange time and I'll add the context at the end but a lovely lady complained about not getting a window with her extra leg room seat that she booked even though she was sitting beside the exit door yeah and we're like this is mad she paid extra she got her leg room what she giving out about no we knew at the time she was she was looking she was baiting she was wanting to have a bit of fun cuz what ended up happening was at this stage people were coming to rire to be roasted so she was she was in on the game so we went okay why don't we just show what the window is so we we put a little red circle around the small bolt hole window in the door just to show where it was but when we did it first there was two things we did that we we actually didn't do in the end we it was a lovely polished red circle that it looked like it was done by a graphic designer and we had a line of copy that was trying to explain what we were doing with the visual but what happened was because we were conditioning and getting better with how we can deliver the comedy or the entertainment effect or the tone we went we don't need to explain what's going on here so we removed the copy yeah we also went that that circle is too perfect I went that's not us it needs to be looks like we scribbled it because we don't give a [ __ ] yeah so we did the squiggly Microsoft Paint 95 circle on it we just put it out there and we T it' be like fine it'll do really well it'll be kind of a nice nice nice reply it get a bit of but it completely exploded 50 59 million impressions on the one tw Eat Alone PR pickup earned media it just absolutely exploded and then two days later we get tagged in a video and it's on Bloody Jimmy Fallon MH as the cold opening and we're like holy [ __ ] yeah we're done we need to retire that's it that's that's the Internet it's done and we need to we need to finish up close down the laptops head to the pub oh it was like I finished I finished the game it's I've completed it you know so it's done I can go off and retire go back farming but the couple things I called out that could probably carry out how it did so well the one is what I mentioned there about the the mitigation of getting the the comedy effect or the the the response right not forcing or explaining the joke we didn't need to the the visual did it itself she asked where her window was we showed her where the window was that was the gag the next thing it was actually the week the queen passed away and that was a week we were trying to be really respectful cuz we didn't want to again UK hated ran a enough we didn't want them to hate us anymore but we want to be respectful so we were very careful in what we were doing so we thought that this piece of content was safe enough just to keep the lights on and in my opinion I think what happened was because there was no entertaining content anywhere that week there was nothing everyone stopped so I remember all of our Pages our clients we were like just go quiet for a week so it it it was very lighthearted though I think because of that light relief yeah Light Relief people got a giggle out of it and it was actually maybe a bit of a tonic that weak for a lot of people so that mean it got more traction and it probably delivered better because of that um but it's just mad as when those moments happen and look when they do the excitement within the team is crazy like and uh I don't think we'll ever top the Jimmy Fallon moment I keep saying Jimmy Kimmel sometimes I keep on getting mixed up with them but it's just wild the Sanu one you mentioned I think this a very important one because this is when it it can technically go wrong yeah did what we do was wrong yes and no and context is context is really important so Jordan sanche didn't make the World Cup squad the World Cup squad was announced we put out a message at Jordan you can always fly Sunny somewh Sony with us I think was the copy so basically it was always look on the bright side cheeky light banter that you can go on your holidays now not worry about the World Cup but a completely exploded for all the wrong reasons there were people who got it found it witty and they knew it was R A and that's what we do and there were people who didn't like it because they just and that was fine but there was the people over here who took it completely out of context and what ended up happening was they started to connect it back to Euro 2020 around the Miss panty the toxic nature of the intern off the backa Sancho rashford and saca's penalty Miss there was then the United fans that will gang up on anybody who regardless of what happens anything anti- United they will go for you and then it's there just people were getting offended uh on his behalf and it just completely blew out of context and what I normally talk about is like where things go wrong I break it into the the anatomy of a tweet when you put something on the Internet people will like it and people won't and that's absolutely fine and that's what happens on the internet and then there's people who take it out of context and when they take it out of context they do for a number of reasons it's either they they've had a bad experience with your brand or business or they just don't like that Creator they are people who get outraged on other people's behalf and that's normally people of influence and when they do it you're screwed because all their fans gang up too and then there's just nasty people on the internet where they spend their days just trolling for the sake of it and if you appear on their feet you're toast but in this instant um um a well-known podcaster um a Diary of a CEO who is a a a man united starward fan more than likely a friend of these guys as well and has relationships with these people was outraged himself on his behalf for the Post now when we put it out there it was meant to be a light-hearted look on the bright side soft bit of banter but once Mr Bartlet put it out to his fans the bartletts they're almost like the swifties of the Taylor Swift World completely piled up on us and it went South now that was a very tough couple of days for the team and figuring it out but my job was to reassure them the context of what we tried to do and explain this is what happens and this is the high risk strategy we play now there's a couple things that we learned from it that could we that that we took forward the first thing we did wrong which we don't normally do is we actually tagged them m and we never normally tag the person unless it's a public figure we don't because that means they get the notifications that's just wrong yeah the second was we should have included more than one player who didn't make the squad the the joke would have been the same but as a collective it wasn't targeting one player and that we [ __ ] up on that you know and that was a really really important part and they're the kind of main things that we we should have took forward and I think would have mitigated a bit more but again this is this is the the point that I tried to make as we got better conditioned and we we we we learned in a live environment we got better over time and these are the ones where we had a really big learning from and we got better we didn't take the Tweet down normally in most cases a lot of Brands would delete it but if we deleted it it would be looking like we are admitting we were doing what everybody said we were doing which we didn't the sentiment in the context of what we said is exactly what we tried to do there was just some things in the structure of how we put it out there that we could have done better and it probably would have mitigated it more I still think the United fans would have came after us I still think it would have been took out of context because all of out the cont the same thing happens when we talk when we were taking I guess the Mickey out of Liz trust and Boris Johnson and all the the the times of the prime ministers being sacked and hired all the time um like again you have 50% of the audience didn't like that because they're obviously proor and they're into that and then the other side weren't so we knew this always happens yeah but this specific one was just really really negative that we learned a lot from yeah and I think that's the thing with social teams it's like as long as you go with the right intentions inevitably over the course of a year and how many countless hundreds of posts you put out one or two would just go stratospheric and then it just takes on gets gets it enters these these Realms and circles where it gets in the Daily Mail and all the rest of it and you know the context is is completely lost like half the tweet's even gone and uh yeah so and what happens there is like you can't control that and if you're brand like Ryan a you're you're great clickbait so that we knew that was going to happen that's something I had to coach to them as well we are going to be a brand who's going to be took to the cold every time regardless of what happens the other thing is you have to be okay with you're you're you're going to get canceled at some point and we were okay with being canceled more because it was the the good was um far out weighing the negative because again we were always a negative brand on social so we weren't worried by that it it wasn't a shock for us but for others it can be you know and there's a couple of things that if you do want to be disruptive you've got to be prepared with being and having a point of difference that a lot of people won't necessarily agree with as well because that's going to grab the attention that you need for good or for bad and there's a i lovely quote Jane Warren former CEO of dermologica says you need to piss off the TW the 80% to win the 20% you can't be all things to all people if you are you sit on the fence you become everybody else in the category everybody else in Social you blend in you won't strike gold and if you want to be that brand you do that you waste our money for us it was important we had to stand out we had to be Punchy because because if we weren't we weren't going to get the good or the bad interaction to get the reach we needed to deliver on the strategy yeah it's awesome okay that was amazing let's let's dive into the always on my favorite part like again we're known for a lot of the reactive content and look I I love that but and and it was an incredibly important part but the real transformative piece of Ryan ER was the always on content and even people inside the business they were all very news Jacky all about the publicity to me was like no we're actually fixing a problem here for the business by doing what we're doing so with the off on just like the reactive it was again another team of four their responsibility was to make the pre-planned entertaining content delivered in majority video format plus static memes I we it was very Memel because that was again that wins on social it becomes the hook the entertainment Factor the topical elements that just grabs attention with our messages brilliantly baked in with contextual references around lowcost the operation first world problems and and and relatable travel um and we built a system and again I'll I'll start by cing at this cuz I I think this is mad and this is the problem social needs to fix as a whole we needed to create a system that we got as much efficiency from our content and our team as possible and one thing we failed to do on social and we I think this has made social the biggest pyramid scheme since topware in my opinion is that if you went to a creative or say if you were a creative agency and you went to a marketing director and you told that marketing director hey I want to make a TV app but it's going to cost us a quarter of a million pound but here's the catch it can only go on ITV one this Saturday and only be shown once and never used again the market director go like what the [ __ ] are you talking about what you mad are you mad like we need to deliver frequency that ad needs to be used multiple times on multiple stations to try and get the message across get brand awareness or cut true we have to share it multiple times but for some reason on social social media agencies creative agencies and everyone their prescription in most cases is you need to be creating content seven days a week every month pre-planned monthly plans but you can only put it on social once and never use again it's old it's redundant it's not fresh that's absolute bollocks but yet every other form marketing Communications does it all the time at frequency and at repetition because that's how you actually land a message now can you do a different types of content with the same message yes you can and that's what we did as well but to say one piece of content can never be used again is absolute NS so we had to find a system to find efficiencies and when we made video content that we got as much return on on views to the production time it took as possible so there was no idea of what our volume of output was at first and but we needed to start somewhere so we created said we need to deliver 10 pieces of video meme content and 10 pieces of static meme content one week in advance approved and signed off for the following week and if we get to that level of system um we are now starting to become operational as a team that took forever to to to get it right away people weren't doing it again guys weren't comfortable with being organized again the people we brought in they were mix of detail orientated people amazingly unorganized creative people and they were trying to figure it out but it was absolutely beautiful when they did but we eventually got there and when we started to create the the the the frequent 10 pieces of content across static and across video per week we then started to see which content was performing and being sticky and we put it into what we call the Banger bank if it hit a certain amount of views 100,000 at first and that's a lot for most brands but for us it was like that's our starting point we put it into the bank and basically over 16 week period we then created like 160 plus videos and when we started to get there the bank was reaching a surplus a certain level I think 50 60 70 of really good video content that we're getting more than 100,000 views so at that point we went okay now we can reduce the amount we're making every week from 10 to eight and bring two from the bank back into the plan for to to be published again and we ran that for another 16 weeks and we got to the point where now we can we actually have almost 150 to 200 videos H we now look at well what's our Benchmark now it's 150,000 okay we go again anything that he redes that we we keep in the bank anything else goes so we we created this cycle then we got to the point where now we were delivering up to 200,000 views whatever it was then we go from 8 to 6 we did it again we went from 6 to 4 and we started to create this cycle where now rather than a lot of volume we were making it was it was quality over quantity and we created this Beast and if any of those videos that were doing really well normally took about six seven hours to make from concept to to to to final edit but rather than getting a 100,000 views which most people would do when they were creating this content we were putting that out maybe seven or eight times over the course of the whatever a year and a half period and that was delivering three or four million views wow and you're doing that with every video that was was been quality now you're creating this absolute machine what it also alls to do it creates efficiency within your team yes we we're tweaking hooks tweaking thumbnails doing what everybody else does to try and freshen it up to grab attention but even if we didn't do that you know most people who saw it the first time more than likely didn't see it the second time and if they did it's a very small pool of high engageed users you know and with video on the platforms they're pushing it to more L gauge users across reals across shorts across all the touch points even Tik Tok that you're more L gaug users are going to see your content you're got to grow faster but what it allowed us to do was we we prior prti that in our road map to fix that system first and when we got to that system up and running where now we were only making four per week it started to free up more time within the team to focus on other projects so we focus on things that we knew we could achieve based on the realities time and resource we did it we fixed it we pivoted and then we went on to the next problem we needed to solve within our road map and we started to build this really big beast um and what allad us to do it then start to deliver probably the surplus of 15 20 million of that 30 million impressions a week it actually started to be on par with the amount of reach that reactive was getting us and now both of them were playing a huge huge role in driving Fame lowc cost reach but also shift and perception it's amazing how do you concept those uh ideas or how are the how are the team doing that is there a system for that or is it just you've got these great it was it was very iterative and organic at first I had to demonstrate a lot of how to do it we would use a lot of responsive or trending sounds and audios as a starting point we would see that what's in scenarios were playing out within those sounds that were in the point of view of of people and we focus a lot art Direction on point of view in the in the shoes of the passenger rather than the brand talking about what we're doing yeah literally POV POV all the time and then we used our our team which became the characters the admins on screen they were either the passenger or the admin playing those scenarios so it was a lot of of learning and testing and looking at content that was either trending or being repetitive that we could put our spin on as one starting point but then as the team started to get better and creative we develop content pillars and some of them I mentioned which was explaining the low cost rer model so what are all the elements around the low cost model standing in the stairwells why you w the tarmac you know the the bags and policy proced the things that were irating the Millennium people we spoke about earlier and trying to explain in an entertaining way why it is what it is yeah and finding really interesting creative angles to do that and do that at repetition to remind people that these are steps in our policy that gets you made to be faster for less and that was the takeaway message in a lot of that content and we just got a cre repetition um so it was partly mixing what people were doing on the internet following Trends and scenarios looking a lot of inspiration that others doing like stealing with pride there's nothing wrong with that in the Internet it's just when people literally carbon copy the content that's an issue but what you need to do is take it as as an inspiration but put your own angle and spin on it and we did that a lot and we just got better and better and better and then the guys started becoming out of the box creative of what they were doing like they started to develop ridiculous unhinged content through our tone of voice about how planes FL f um this really ridiculous storytelling you know how can you get a spider out of your house but then bring it back randomly to you give him a r Air flight and he send goes off to another country and they just started to get really they understood the the weirdness and the wildness and the unhinged humor what was happening on the platforms and they wrapped it in uh wrapped it around a really important message that we need to do time after time to shift the mindset yeah it's brilliant I would love to get into where you should focus your attention because I think that's the other thing I've heard you talk about there's Brands like Nike and what they do with with where they choose to focus attention yeah it's a great question um like I've done a bit of talks with people around this at the moment and I guess the the shape I'm trying to put on it is you can be on social media without being on social media normally the prescription by experts in Social is you need to do all organic content you need to be High Vol volume high frequency on social to in in that space is that true perhaps but is that the right thing that's going to solve a problem for a branding business probably not there are many ways to use the platforms without publishing any content from your own branded accounts let's go through some examples you mentioned Nike so Nike as a brand using Facebook they have over 70 million people who follow that account they also have football and basketball which has 30 40 millions of people as well but the last time Nike published organically on their Facebook account is January 2018 now you think of a brand of Nike who is one of the best storytellers in the world and they're not making organic storytelling content why my assumption is that they know they're reaching so much critical mass and reach elsewhere across everything that they're doing that they've made an informed decision about what not to do with Facebook but does that mean they're actually not using Facebook Facebook no cuz if you go into their transparency go into their ad Library you can see thousands I think at the time I checked it was, 1900 paid campaigns been run through Facebook and meta delivering direct response ads for Nike that's wild like then that's multi-millions of investment probably on Direct response alone but it's saying that they can they're reaching so many people that they know that these platforms still play an important part of the journey but in the journey is is when they're on a site when they're scrolling or looking and researching shoes and they're at the point of purchase but they may not have have made the purchase that they know that they could probably hit them up on a on a platform like Facebook that can get them over that last that last inch or that last half mile in the in the journey and convert them another example is a lush Lush is that smelly soap brand that when you walk past the high Street it gives you a headache all the time they came out a couple years ago and said that we are no longer using social media because social media is bad it's not good for people and it's not safe for children partly true but also they're very good at PR yeah and they use it as a great PR story they're still on Pinterest running pay campaigns they're still elsewhere are Lush off social media are Lush off Instagram and Facebook at the moment they are not are they publishing organically on their channels no they're not but what they're doing is they're probably using product and PR to reach creators and people of influence to talk about their product and cut true with saliens probably what they found that based on realities of time resource and budget that they are not reaching or cutting through on their own channels but they know working with the right creators and the right people will cut through and give them salience so they're making a decision that they're not going to use organic but they're going to use social in a different way so much so that recently they put out a job advertisement for a social PR manager and their role was to drive as much earned social media as possibly can so again understanding the power of the platforms but making an informed decision about what to do and more importantly what not to do and that's good strategy I'll give you one more which is a little bit different but it's gym shark one of the biggest success stories probably within the UK over a clothing brand that has just completely exploded you have Ben France's CEO who bootstrapped Jim Shar he was printing in own t-shirts in his own room he didn't have aotus and he had no budget to promote the brand but what he did have was product and what he did know as a young person with social media has a lot of influential people with a lot of reach if I put my product on those people I going to get a lot of awareness and cut true he also understood the power of of the gym community and cultivating on on social so he started to build that and that became a huge stap in the growth of awareness of the gym shark brand so much so that now it's valued at what1 billion pound or more so now they're going after and they're going to compete with the likes and Nikes and the Lulu lemons of the world but what they're doing now is they're they're taking a shift they know now that time and effort on that is not going to hit the scale or the reach that they need so they're reducing the amount of influencers that they're working with paid or unpaid or whatever way they're doing they've they've they've made the team smaller and now they're trying to figure out strategically where they can win next and more than likely they're going to be using a lot of paid media to reach scale a lot of organic content and probably other tactics or other approaches or other pivots of the strategy that they can use the platforms to solve a problem for them and all three are examples of showing how to use the Platforms in the way that we all assume we should do them and I guess the takeaway there what's my point you don't need to 24/7 on social to win on it you don't need to be publishing organic fee for your channels and if you find a problem and a way to solve it narrow down focus on that and try and have cut true impact if not you're just diluting what you're doing and you're not doing anything at all yeah massive lesson and uh there's just a a sea of [ __ ] isn't there really if you scroll I mean you don't even see it that's the thing like I don't know who sees it and you can I think a lot of these Brands they rely on on the paid stuff because they can pay for the reach but the organic stuff is just like what it's just nothing and in many cases that is still a very good solution like if your problem is is reaching the Right audience social is an amazing place to use very clever strategic paid media both to build a brand that also to convert people if the creative is right yeah but again most people are just taking tv ads and putting money behind them and splashing on the internet yeah you're paying for an impression but you're not making one at all so again it's down to the use of the platforms but paid for many and even my time when we talked early about bford and all those other brands my prescription for most of those Brands would have been a paid first approach yeah and don't touch organic at all did that happen no because take bet for for example they they invested in a lot of sponsorship and they had a lot of assets they had FC Barcelona Juventus Arsenal Sevilla they had a host of horse racing TT football ambassadors across the globe and with these Partnerships you get access them for content and they went well we have to use that and all of our time and effort went into trying to create that cont was it amazing content wasn't amazing experience [ __ ] yeah I was with Ronaldo bbov making video content all it was insane the experience I had but we wasted so much time on trying to activate the sponsorship asset we lost and didn't find what the real problem was for that brander business and how we could use social better to solve now to be fair the pay guys on the other side were doing an exceptional job but how we were using social outside of that I don't think we were doing a very good job and that's the biggest learning like when I came to rire all of my I literally ripped up the Playbook and I went again because it wasn't right for that business and I think the big scary thing for me is the lack thereof strategy you know and um I don't know if I said it earlier but I again with those talks asking people about the strategy I I I've gone into rooms where I literally ask people there's a room of 800 people or a room of 100 people and I ask them to put up their hand and tell me can you honestly tell me that you have a documented strategy that is solving a problem or you spot a gap that social can can help the business that you know what that is you have an articulation of that and you have a set of guiding principles or whatever you want to call it that get you from where you are now to where you want to be next um and in most cases I also caveat that do not put your hand up if you're going to talk about how you're using the platforms do not put your hand up if you're talking about how you publish content that's tactics that's not strategy and in most cases when I did that no more than three people put their hand up in the room and that scares the [ __ ] out of me you have Brands and businesses who don't have any money who are doing exceptional work because that's forcing them to think outside the box and then you've got the majority who are spending six figur seven figures on social media organic content that's doing nothing and the lack of strategy is probably the biggest reasons why and the lack of really good thinking and the focus of so-called experts wrapping tactics and calling it strategy and you see it all over Tik Tok and see it all over all the time you've got these jump cut guys with their podcast mics why the [ __ ] do they have a podcast mic they're on their own and they're talking about here's 10 ways to go viral because they had one viral video that they got four months ago and now they're selling playbooks for 50 and you've got these guys who are just blinker and causing this again pyramid scheme that I talk about and there's one thing I'd love to do and and I might do it I might need help with it I would love to sew a seed of a fake update or a fake hack on social media and get one of the big Bros to to to put it out there and actually see how many of the mini versions of him who have the same setup and the same execution style the hundreds of them that take that hack and make their own content and then reveal that it's absolute [ __ ] and just show how much of a big problem that we have with social right now because it's all tactical it's all about you know viral hacks and downloading of playbooks because one person who gets popular in the internet now becomes a um an a guru or an expert and a self-proclaimed one at that and that's really not helping us as an industry because we get very frustrated because SE Sues and senior people don't buy into what we're trying to do especially when we're trying to unpack and decouple the polished nature of marketing a to make it work on the platforms better but we are all to blame for not doing a very good job over lading it back to brand or business and in a room where you probably only have 30 minutes with these people and you're talking about the fluffy side of Social and you're not bringing it back to rational thinking addressing a problem showing how the power of social can of impact because we all know the power it has but we're all using it very wrong and we're not doing a very job good job of taking them on the way like these people know social is huge they know it's important but they don't know why either so they're quite happy putting this little team over there in the corner doing their fluffy organic content stick that genzer that we hire or that intern on Tik Tok put them in a mascot suit and make them dance to music and it's like because why because that's what we think it is and that's okay and we'll give you a certain amount of budget it's like no oh we we need to get in the room and do a better job go this is a rich space that if we nail a good strategy and even with the current resource we have we can show we can cut through if we do that can you unlock more for us and in most cases they will and that's the conversations I'm even having with people in in my new step forward at the moment that I want to talk to the decision makers because we H we have to try and convince them that it is better it can be done better if you follow a certain way yeah I think there's a big lesson in there and so many people need to just maybe take a week out and go we're just going to think about the strategy for this week a month a more if if if 90% of Brands turned off their content on the internet right now nobody would give a [ __ ] nobody would miss it nobody would care and that's the reality but yet we're still doing it but again people are still afraid to turn it off because oh no we're going to lose reach no you you're you're going to be rewarded with a certain amount of reach and Impressions or whatever it is on the channels because you're you're there you're showing up but that's all it is and nobody's Eng no nobody's interacting with it or if they are they're high engaged users and again if you think about growing a business it's not the high engage user the majority of time you need to reach to grow and and actually make money it's the L Eng gauge user you need to reach and that's the beauty of how the platforms have changed if you can switch on your highing gauge users to interact with your content at PACE it's going to tell the platforms this is good I'm going to push it to others and now you start reaching that l gug users so even if you explain that sort of language to people within the business and above they understand that you understand that social is not just fluff it's it's a way that you can actually build a brand it's a way that you can potentially grow a business and now when you start using that language or narrative you'll probably get a little bit more respect which means you might unlock more budget or more headcount or actually invest in Social better yeah let's come on to um what you're doing now were you were you you fired from r no I resigned so uh I I guess I'm doing my PR Trail it's probably reputation manage what's going on so I resigned on August 3rd from Ryan Air um I actually took on an expanded role in January I was going to start working on the wider creative Department rebuild the team in there and kind of shift the direction and take all the learnings we had from social tonally what we did and try and bring it through the rest of our coms and as part of that conversation I said look I'm happy to do this but I need to see a change and how our department is being managed uh the culture and how people were communicating to members of the team was disrespectful bullying and not professional mhm I I would got a commitment to change but it didn't so once it started to impact my team more uh I took a stand I took it forther and I said I couldn't stand over it anymore and I said I need dramatic change or I'm going to have to leave so again you got the the usual Spiel from the likes of the haar department and and the people themselves and saying oh we will change but I'm like what are you going to do about it tell me what are the things and it just Fallen de ears again I I didn't believe what was happening so I decided to walk away so I handed in my resignation on in August I got a gardening leave letter the next day for three months and I've been sitting at home ever since until November figuring out what the [ __ ] am I going to do now don't get me wrong I wasn't struggling I I knew rer has built something huge and we we as a team built something massive I knew the currency was going to be high I knew people would be curious about wanting to P you work with me so I knew it was a calculated risk but the right risk because there were a lot of people in there who were young trying to build a CV there are people in there who are trying to save for a mortgage so they need to have consistent pay slips to prove and get approval I know there are people there who had young families who were being victims of being bullied and the [ __ ] that was going on that was just not right there's being firm and fair and right areas of business is firm and fair and that's what I loved about it there was no [ __ ] but when an individual makes it personal that's not that's not acceptable in a professional setting so how many how many people went in the end so when I resigned um I six of my team went in total over the course of the the couple of months I believe there was more again I I don't inflator number or get it wrong but it could have been anything up to 15 people and the the waer department started to leave and again nothing was done which is disappointing but again um yeah that that's one I have to be careful about how I talk about it as as I say to people I I'll get up the steps of the Court but I don't want to get through the door so I'll explain enough of about what happened and again if you want to go into my LinkedIn you'll see a some tips from a LinkedIn post I put out there as well about my experience and kind of watch outs people in the professional setting should do um and there's some good learnings there yeah and so what are you going to do now so over the last few months I've talked with some amazing Brands and businesses either either nosy for the gossip um either wanting to to know how we did it at Ry a or wanting me to work with them m and a lot of stuff got unpack where people wanted to come in and go inside I was talking to agencies about potentially coming in in kind of setting up departments and roles but the big thing that stood out as we've talked about throughout this conversation was the lack of strategy the operational pain points that people are having within their business to actually deliver what's needed and I knew that's a a skill set that I'm really good at and it's probably the area of what I do that I enjoy the most like being creative is great but there's nothing I love more than find finding a problem and and shaping a strategy and then putting a team of people together execute on it and seeing that click and seeing it work I probably get more more satisfaction of that than I do as creative around the the production I don't get me wrong I love making content but that I preferred it so a lot of the conversations they were the common problems that were coming through in the conversations that I had with people so I went okay there's a huge gap here I think that I can start fixing so I've set up a consultancy called Franklin and it's part of a little mini group so I've partnered with two kind of um other um former colleagues of mine um from an agency days that already had a an agency set up called Franken bear um and they came to me we we with with a with a good proposal about how I can run a consultancy h support me with the operational side of things which I'm really [ __ ] at um to allow me to focus on the things that I'm I'm think I'm good at um and grow and also to to grow a business over time there's only so much a consultancy can do and the aim of the consultancy in the narrative we're putting out there we actually want to make ourselves redundant we don't want to be in a business for too long because that that us being a really [ __ ] consultant if we were worth our salt we would be able to do the work prove it and walk out and you guys could live on and be be there when needed and but what it allows to do is we're all we're operating like a minig group where in time if I build good trust build good strategy show that they can be more sufficient internally that I can then be a third party of choice with my sister agency to help deliver some of the work if it's needed um but essentially I've developed a positioning around a 12-month program and in that 12mon program prog I I come in and I roll up my Steves I become an extension of your team um I come in as an impartial point of view so I'm not the friend of of you I'm not the friend of the team I'm not the friend of the agencies or your partners I'm coming in to frankly give you information that I think can make this better for everyone based on the realities of time resource and budget I'll develop a strategy because most of them just don't have one I'll then look at your team and organization seeing is that a team that can deliver on that what's the reality of of them delivering on it based on their size and the budget available to them um and then figuring out how can I Reco redevelop that team to teach them how to execute the strategy or to potentially hire and build additional members to try and deliver on it depending on on the clients and the partners then when we get to that far we go into operational mode so we'll we will work with them and work on the the the production planning the processes the operational side of actually delivering on that strategy on a day-to-day week to week month-to-month basis it will be iterative learn develop all train all coach the team members and trying to put a succession plan in place where rather than hiring a head of social at first they could actually hire really good managers probably two for the price of a head of Social and that means then that those two people get a commitment from the business that you guys are coming in as the Future Leaders here but you're going to get the tutelage and the coaching off of frankly to try and get you to that point when frankly goes you guys are going to take over and what that is it's good because you get the right amount of executional support now but you're getting all the other senior thinking from from frankly the other important part is there's there's a road map for those people and their Futures and their career growth they mightn't be ready just yet because they don't have the Strategic knowledge they don't have the leadership of the team operational skills needed but they're very good on social tactically they're brilliant and they're really great um um at executing and what they get is they get it they know where their next point is they know where the next step in their career is and they're going to be developed to do that and that's really attractive for somebody coming to a business too so when you're trying to find the right Talent you've already got a road map in place about what their future looks like even beyond the roller just stepping into and that becomes really really great so over that period of time over 12 months we build this out to the point where I hand over the keys and I write off into the sunset and I should no longer be needed so I go off and work with my next brand now again obviously as I said how do I grow this well I grow by trying to get more more people on in frankly to um understand the strategy side and the operational side that works with as a as a team for me that I will be there for a certain amount but you've got trusted people who know my system and I will build their profile and their reputation too is trusted people within the industry and we become this really strong partner that really actually starts to to make this function and operate better that can maybe be something sustainable and may increase the likelihood of your strategy actually working and then hopefully in time if they do want to continue relationship they head over to my sister agency where I'll also be a director in to try and deliver some amazing work at the same time it sounds great and uh for anyone listening that's a masterclass in pitching I've signed up already there we go and my rates my rates my rates are good but you need to get them fast because again my pricing hasn't been the best and this is somebody who's who's loose around the edges who doesn't have a clue how this works that's why my my partners are going Michael what the hell are you doing you're not even Char this is not a charity this is a good business and you're good at what you do so exactly so um yeah no look I'm excited I've got some really great Partners already signed up I'm I'm talking with a lot of people I think the exciting challenge for me right now is actually how do I find the right strategy and operational people to come in working with me that can be taught the system or know the system already that of how I I I I like to to do it as a starting point but like that's just a starting point for a brander business because as you go in there it needs to be adaptable and then I need somebody with with the smarts and the agility to then adapt like I would do to try and do it and if I do that that means rather than working with five to six Partners which I am now I can probably take that up to 12 14 15 which means I can grow a business which is fantastic um scary but fantastic exting it is and do I think I I would have done this ever I I don't think so um I'm a dreamer don't get me wrong and I the consultancy was one of those things that was something I want to scratch to itch but I needed the positioning to be right I didn't want to be a consultant that's out there who can give you a strategy for 10 grand and then head off because if that strategy failed I'll be to blame not the people who are executing the strategy and that's my reputation gone let's let's do the quickfire questions oh quickfire Jesus I'll probably get these wrong and then I'll get myself in trouble advice for someone just starting out be relentless be curious and do not follow the corporate social approach to how you use the platforms think outside the box yeah how do you run your teams oh great uh I try to show by doing and then Empower people am I half micromanager half um empowering leader yes I am but the but people need to be shown and take them on the journey so I get it to the point where they understand the system and I try and take my hands off I'm getting better at that was I like that 10 years ago was I like that 5 years ago bloody no I was the most obsessed micro manager to all the details but the one thing you get better at you get better at time this is not quickfire by the way so really sorry what I'm teaching people is how to get emotionally intelligent faster and that's what I can Empower then I can Empower them to be better people yeah how did you find good people I stalk them um I like LinkedIn has been great but even I I put out a couple of roles for one of my new partners right now I got 600 applicants I think 10 with in those applicants even met the criteria of the CV young people at the moment have this habit of literally fast fast apply fast apply fast apply without reading I even in the description made it very clear I don't need a corporate social person I need somebody who understands the platforms but you must have video editing experience majority of people had no video editing so they're not reading it I go look for potential people and more importantly I find people who are who are actually creators not social media managers who are on the cusp of becoming probably be very popular and I try and get them before they are popular offer them a full-time job and give them the tradeoff that I will help you teach you about social from my side of the world to work with Brands and partners if you give me your creative and your production skills and at the same time you can still grow your own personal brand and I'll give you as much creative freedom to do that as possible that's a good trade-off you get exceptionally creative people you might get a year to two out of them maybe more they might even then go do you know what financially this brand site is too much effort I like this side and I'll stay on but I stalk people I find people who are creators I find them just as they're kind of hitting at the right threshold of growth and I try and get them into wherever I work yeah they need skin in the game they need to have have been burnt by posting it and it getting five views yep big time lowest moment doing this oh I don't I don't have a lowest moment of being on the platforms because I I've always been comfortable with failing on the platforms so that's not a problem I think there's just in my early days I made decisions as a young broke gobshite um in an office environment doing really stupid [ __ ] and I again that's probably from being a very irresponsible uh less emotionally intelligent individual but I think relationships in my early days I probably wasn't great at and it didn't help and but I've gotten better yeah best moment best moment I think the best moment is seeing the moment when the team and Ryan a clicked and understood why they were there cuz you had this team of Misfits who were a couple of social media manager purs who were detail oriented who I needed to steer the ship and you had a team of absolute chaotic unorganized creative creators who didn't understand working in a corporate environment and it was absolute nuts the tension between them all was just hilarious but by coaching and and developing and explaining why they were there why their strengths were important to the team why I wanted to develop the areas that they wanted to develop but the moment they all understood their role within the team and then within the process AC across everything we did it was probably the that's probably the best moment I've ever experienced because when it clicked the difference of what we were doing then to the difference of what we did now and the success we made I don't think it would have happened unless they jelled MH and that was a Magic Moment yeah well well Ed machine kindest thing someone's ever done for you oh this is going to be sappy but my wife giving me three lovely children ah my sure I'm going to cry no it is I'm a I'm a very simple humble guy so yeah yeah top three books top three books oh see I'm not a big book reader um I listen to a the books I'm getting better at it but I love shoe dog by Phil Knight I loved uh green lights by um Matthew MCC and um Alchemy by Rory Southerland is a fantastic book and anybody working in social media to think outside the box and be an Alchemist is something you have to possess I think because it's such a a a critical space and southernland is somebody who's a traditional marketeer even gets that in the world of social media and digital and even he's he he's doing some really interesting podcast work at the moment and he's really trying to explore his Horizons in this digital space but they're three good books that I left yeah I glad I could answer that CU I didn't think I'd be able to that's yeah they were banging top three creators top three creators oo um I love uh again they're not really creative I love the Washington Post the content that they do on Tik Tok I love um oh what are the guys the three guys from Australia they know a TV show oh damn this always again I I ah this really annoying because I don't know do you know they're uh oh they're just prankster guys they're like um the oh impr practical jokers they have their own version of Impractical Joker show in Australia I think they're [ __ ] hilarious and there is a woman in Ireland called emor and has a comedy comedian I think she's great because she's very relatable to parents so a lot of the relatable parent content I find really entertaining at the moment um that's free that's free that's such a tough question so I normally ask these questions and my interviews with people and I'm like I'm going to catch you out I'm eating my own [ __ ] now um what are you searching for I am searching for a way to get back to farming so whatever I'm doing at the moment I want to go on a route of to band again because it's mad to think that I am working in a full-time career and doing really well and now I'm setting up my own business in the world of social media if you would have told me that 15 years ago I would have laughed at you I'm a small humble boy from sou Kenny in Ireland who was on a small farm didn't have a pot to pissing but there was nothing more gratifying than the honesty of working on a farm being out in the fresh air and getting away from the internet and that's probably what I'm searching for I'm probably searching to get away from the internet and have my own farm and drink lots of coffee yeah what's next for you what's next frankly frankly is next for me I need to try and figure out how this works I'm scared shitless but excited at the same time so um that's going to be really important I'm going to continue pimping myself out I guess as much as possible so um you know if any Brands wants to talk to me if any podcasts if any Journal any us TV talk show Oprah whoever I'm I'm ready for you love that and where can people find you uh people can find me on LinkedIn at Michael Corin you can find on Twitter at leem machine I won't tell you the story around that nickname that's a college nickname that we can park here for now and yeah look and then funny enough as a business do we have a website set up yet no we don't because we haven't had time because we're trying to actually on board new clients but you'll probably be able to find uh frankly at we aref frank. in a couple of weeks we bought the domain the site's just not built yet work in progress work in progress

Channel: Callum McDonnell

Views: 11,267

Keywords: creator economy, podcast for content creators, podcast content strategy, social media for podcasts, creator playbooks, michael corcoran, how to go viral, tiktok, social media, Social Media Strategy, Content Creation, Digital Marketing, Social Media Content, Brand Awareness, Social Media Trends, Marketing Insights, how to become a successful youtuber, Reactive Marketing, Always-On Marketing, ryanair, steven bartlett, jadon sancho, content strategy, social media marketing

Id: 2MrJRCUbRl4

Length: 83min 58sec (5038 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2024