Ryanair and Lunatic Bloggers

I'm sure you've already caught this story, and to be honest I've decided to post about it mainly due to the numerous bad experiences I've had with Ryanair and the fact that I now refuse to fly with them under any circumstances whatsoever!

To say that a company has screwed up in a communication with the public would be a complete understatement in this case. Ryanair haven't just screwed up; they've loaded a gun, shot themselves in the foot and then asked one of their aircraft to roll over said foot. Now more then ever the concept of online PR and reputation management should be forfront to all business considerations. The net never forgets and as soon as we bloggers find an interesting story (especially one that involves blogging) we're going to talk about it.

The situation went as follows: Jason Roe, a web developer from Dublin, was booking tickets online with Ryanair when he discovered a glitch that allowed him to book Ryanair tickets for €0.00. The glitch was a session glitch to do with multiple instances being open. Of course, he blogged about it. Jason got a response from Ryanair...

A Ryanair staff member replied, “You’re an idiot and a liar!! fact is! (sic) you’ve opened one session then another and requested a page meant for a different session, you are so stupid you dont even know how you did it!”
What followed was a back and forth between Jason and the staff memeber, in which he explained that he didn't think he could get free flights, just that there was a sessions glitch in their system. Ryanair have confirmed that it was their staff that made contact.

“Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion,” said the airline’s spokesman Stephen McNamara. “It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy in corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again. Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy…”

In relation to my thoughts on Ryanair shooting themselves in the foot; Jason’s site now appears in 4th position on Google for the search term ‘Ryanair’. Idiots!

You should have seen this

There are certain things the internet has allowed the world to share. Technological advancement, breaking news stories, home and job searching and, not forgetting, instantaneous communication of data in all its forms.

Big deal though, you knew this.

But consider everything else the internet has given us. All the memes, the viral videos, the flash games, the wickedly cool microsites.... all of it. And that's where Greg steps in. This is perhaps one of the best lists I have ever come across. This is.....

"Greg Rutter's Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You're a Loser or Old or Something (in no particular order)...."

Happy Friday folks :)

The Unseen Video

This may be the most unique video you will ever see, every time you see it. The Unseen Video is a constantly changing, geo-specific music video for Mike Milosh's - You Make Me Feel, which is driven and created every time you see it based on your location and the current weather.

Daniel Scheibel, one of the creators, explained, "we wanted to create new synergies between the music, the video and the surroundings of the viewer. Every little change in your environment ensures that you will never see the same video twice. The look of the video might slightly change within an hour, but will have a whole new character in a few months."

Celebrating The White Album

Last September (dunno how I missed it), Mojo did a really cool UGC style microsite celebrating the anniversary of The Beatles White Album. The site lets users place their own message into a "homemade" video recording of the Beatles and send it to friends. Basically it plays through as if it were a normal recording of the Fab Four, back in the day, but at the end you can catch a glimpse of John's notebook with your words in it. Really well done.

Sorry, no musicians

No doubt you've all seen the (extremely annoying) Iggy Pop ads for Swiftcover.com car insurance. Well funny thing, as it turns out, Swiftcover don't actually cover musicians. So looks like there might be a bit of bother for them. According to the Advertising Standards Authority, there have been 12 complaints from musicians who have been refused cover, while all their ads feature on of the most recognisable musicians in the world.

Someone somewhere screwed up. It does beg the question though - how often do your marketing people talk to your product or legal people? I'd hope all the time to be honest. I for one know that all the clients I deal with have strict policies on how, where, when and what can be used to advertise their products/services, and that's aside from the individual clauses, disclaimers and exceptions that any given product or service may have.

Anyway, like I said, someone somewhere screwed up. Now Swiftcover will have to live with a raft of these videos popping up (and remember, nothing dies on the net!)...

Is this a sign of hard times...

I just saw a tv ad for Mindshare on 3e. I'm fairly sure I've never seen an ad on Irish tv for any high profile marketing or media agency. Actually, correction, for any marketing or media agency. Is this a signal of particular hard times for Mindshare? Or perhaps they're ahead of the game and next week Ogilvy will have a spot during Champions League half time? Doubtful.

Let everyone's eyebrows dance!

In an exciting add-on to the already hugely successful 'Eyebrows' campaign, from Cadbury, users have been invited to participate in a communal event on the MSN Homepage called JiveBrow09. Using webcams, users can record their own 'Eyebrow Jive' and stream it straight onto the MSN Homepage. The main event, The JiveBrow Dance, will take place this Friday (27th February), alongside a host of other activity created by Hyper, Cadbury's Digital Agency. Users can also utilise a new 'Eyebrowser' application to put some dancing eveybrows on any page on the web.

All-in-all there is a major drive to capitalise and leaverage the initial success of the eyebrows video (which recieved over 4 million views in its first two weeks live) created by Fallon. Dairy Milk brand manager, Sandie Dilger, has said, "We really wanted our online activity to allow people to get involved with the ‘eyebrows' campaign themselves."