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“Delve is an insight engine that transforms how brands understand their world.”
With every story, thread and meme battling for our attention, what do we focus on and care about? Communications pros Sean Garrett and Allison Braley—trusted by Twitter, Amazon, Meta, Slack, Bain Capital Ventures, and more—talk with those shifting the future of communications and who pays attention to what.
Sean 00:01
Welcome to Attention Shift. We unpack where communication and communications is headed. I'm Sean Garrett and we’re supported by Delve with the top-level context engine for comms. My co-host, Allison Braley, and I talk to industry experts about how we show up and get our message across in an era of limited time and shortened attention spans. Let's dive in.
Sean 00:28
Oh, hey, Allison.
Allison 00:30
Hey, Sean.
Sean 00:32
You know, this is our last episode of our first season, our 12th episode, and I think it's a perfect one. And it's a perfect one because this thematic of Attention Shift, obviously, is about shifting attention and fleeting attention and capturing attention. And we have a guest today, Michael Corcoran, who used to be the head of social at Ryanair, who proved that you could be a budget European airline and capture the world's attention, which is a pretty good trick.
Allison 01:03
Yeah. I mean, like, pretty unheard of, and I'm a huge fan of his work. We'll talk to him in a little bit. But Sean, let's talk a little bit about social more generally, and sort of our philosophy on that. What are your hot takes right now?
Sean 01:15
My hot takes are that… My hot takes on social? I mean, you're talking to a Gen Xer who, like, has a private Instagram account. And if you like,
Allison 01:25
You don’t have a finsta?
Sean 01:27
No, I don't have a finsta. I mean, my kids have, like, seven, but I should probably get one someday. But, I mean, like, if you look at my feed, it's basically, like, music videos from the 80s and 90s. Golf instruction. Yes. Baseball content, and then mixed with like stuff from my friends who go, like, on parties, on yachts in New York City. Allison, really.
Allison 01:55
Yeah, I mean, really, I… that was a fun one for me. I'm, like, a huge Richard Branson person, but the intersection with social there was the night Christine Choi on the Virgin team invited me on that boat to run my mouth, the new Virgin ship. There were also, like, a zillion YouTubers on there, touring the ship for the first time. And just the amount of screens capturing everything was a sight to see.
Sean 02:18
And I'm sure each one of them, it felt like they were the only ones on the ship.
Allison 02:23
Yeah, exactly. Like as if Richard Branson personally invited me alone to be here. Yeah.
Sean 02:27
I think people know that I was the first head of comms marketing anything at Twitter, and I was, like, a very big Twitter user for a long time. It was injected into my bloodstream. It became part of my DNA. And somewhere along the Elon Musk era, I blew up my account and my many 1000s of followers. And I do have a burner Twitter account. Yeah, I have to be on there. I mean, I have to be on there with my current job, and I have to be like, checking things out, but I haven't recreated my Twitter experience on X and any kind of sort of imagination. I'm mostly just there to make sure that I'm not completely in the dark. I guess, at this stage in social, what excites you, like what interests you? I guess, Allison, what captures your attention?
Allison 03:21
It's a good question. I'm obsessed with the guy on Twitter ,now X, Derek. Guy is actually his name. He's a guy named Guy. But what I like about Derek is he sort of writes about menswear. He also writes about all kinds of other things, and really uses menswear as a way into talking about other things. And his just like, depth of knowledge is so impressive. He goes so incredibly deep on that one subject, and is really the authority. But people, for whatever reason, fight with him about things, and there is not an argument that he has not won. Which is, again, a gift I appreciate, and a gift that our guest later in the episode also has, that Ryanair has really leaned into. But he's one example for me. But I think more broadly, at work about social, there are kind of like two principles that I try to explain to companies when it comes to social. And one is, sometimes companies still in the year of our lord 2025, come to me and say, I just want, like, big press. I just want, like, big brand name media to cover me. And so I don't really want to dabble in all that other stuff. I just want to get press. And I'm like, Well, you can't get press anymore without having content and the dreaded thought leadership and social like all of those things ladder up to people covering you, because then you're visibly an expert on something. Like nobody wants to talk to you as an expert on something sight unseen. Like they have to know that you are, in fact, an expert. There's no avoiding those things. And hopefully you can use those tools to sharpen your point of view so that when you do talk to mainstream media, it's locked in. And the other principle I think about a lot, you know, with social these days is that it's really in everything we do. And so if you're doing any sort of a campaign for your company, and you're not considering what the internet writ large, as Nick Shapiro in our last episode called it, you know, if you're not considering what their reaction is going to be, you're kind of doing it wrong/
Sean 05:06
100%. I mean, you know, I mean my personal experience with social does not color my professional experience with social and in my professional life. To me, it is the fabric of everything that we do. It's basically the spine of everything we do. It is the connective tissue to both, you know, long term thought leadership to near-term action. It sparks how you think about messaging and doing messaging in real time and getting input and figuring out, like, what actually resonates and what doesn't resonate. It's what makes you colorful, what makes you fun, it’s what makes you human. And I think there's just like, to the point of the conversation with with Michael in a bit, there's just like so much you can do with it, if you can break out of the sea of sameness that exists. And I think that's my main frustration, is just that there's never been more activity on quote/unquote social, on all the different platforms that we know and know well. But there's just, like, only pockets of originality and only, like, small pockets of things that can break through and grab your attention. So I mean, I'm excited for what is on this other side of where we're at. And I think we're actually maybe on an uptrend towards a more interesting space, like post-2010s Instagram vibe, but I don't know. I'm fired up about it. I'm hiring someone to run social and community at a firm, and I kind of feel like it's, I don't know if it'll be the most important hire I ever make, but it certainly is gonna be one of the most important hires. Because I just think that it's… it’s a role that I don't know just bleeds over into so many different things that can be so powerful. So.
Allison 06:46
So, if you know someone great, or you are someone great, reach out to Sean.
Sean 06:59
Shout out to me.
Allison 07:00
Reach out to Sean. I wanted to mention quickly, before we get into the episode, is… I looked at a technology as part of my job in VC the other week that, you know, one of my partners brought up and said, Hey, since you work in comms, you should evaluate this with me. I don't know if we're gonna end up doing the deal, but I was fascinated by this company. It is a company that is using AI to help you win any argument. And so basically it will ingest your brand tenants, brand voice, whatever, and then it can basically program responses, not necessarily even from your account. Surrogate accounts, you know, like it was sort of dystopian in a way, but also potentially the future where, like, let's say, you know, you have 1500 employees who were on social, you could almost pre-draft them too, with these, you know, stickier talking points. And it's very AI powered, and it understands the internet and who you're talking to. And it's interesting to me to consider where AI will take some of this.
Sean 07:49
Listen, I'm a huge user of AI. I'm not an anti-AI person. You know, in our jobs, at the same time, I have not seen AI create actual content yet that actually breaks away from the pack and makes things more interesting.
Allison 08:03
This was the first one I've seen that does that.
Sean 08:05
Oh, really.
Allison 08:08
That's sort of designed for that. There's a dark side to it, obviously, where you could see bad actors spinning up an entire bot army that's very well trained. But, you know, you could also see people using it for good, like any technology. So it was an interesting one to look at. But anyway, that, I think, is where the future of this is going.
Sean 08:24
What is the future of this podcast, Allison?
Allison 08:27
Yeah, so this is episode 12, and Sean and I had sort of shook hands and agreed to a 12 episode season. Sean has, like, a very serious job now.
Sean 08:31
You do too
Allison 08:36
At the end of the year I have nine more business…
Sean 08:39
I just had a first serious job, you know. And I like, holy crap, is this actually what people do at work?
Allison 08:46
Publicly traded company, though that's like, that's hard. But anyway, we would like to bring this podcast back at some point. We're not sure when that will be. I mean, obviously our schedules are crazy, but we definitely want to bring it back. So if you have guest ideas, if you have feedback for us, if there are people or topics or things that we didn't cover season one that you're pounding the table for, please reach out. We would love to do this again and run it back. And also, if you're a sponsor who wants to be a part of season two, you know, reach out to us as well.
Sean 09:12
100%. And that both those things will accelerate us bringing this back. And I think like finding great guests, you know, is kind of underrated and how like the process around that. And I think that if people have really great ideas, and you kind of know the flow, you know who, what we know after 12 episodes now, you know like kind of folks that we gravitate towards. So I… 100%, if you know folks like that, if they seem like the folks that have been on for 12 episodes, send them over. We're, like, super interested.
Allison 09:42
Yeah. I mean, and notice too, like the guests we've chosen, I hope haven't been right down the fairway. And so if you have somebody who's outside of comms, but you think has an interesting perspective on communicating, we're very, we're very open to those and excited about those guests. But Sean, what are we doing today?
Sean 09:58
We are talking to Michael Corcoran. It's the idea that airline can win the internet by trolling its own customers would have sounded insane not too long ago, but that's really what happened at Ryanair. Under Michael Corcoran’s leadership, their social team turned baggage fees, cramped seats, windowless rows, all the like things about airlines that you're supposed to hate into viral content, and in the process, it kind of set a standard for creating a unique brand voice. Today, Michael is building Slice, a consultancy that's focused on kind of making this social voice smarter, braver, more strategic. Bottom line, if you care about attention, creativity, and cutting through the noise and indeed capturing one's attention, this episode is for you. Enjoy.
Allison 10:48
And I was hoping Michael would absolutely drag us, but he did not. He's a very nice man, so stay tuned.
Sean 10:52
Hey Michael, great to have you.
Michael 10:56
Thank you for having me. This has been fun so far.
Sean 11:02
Dear listener, you missed out on so much great tech prep. Speaking of just being at the top of the game, certainly we have listeners in the UK and other places outside the United States, but I would say the most of our at least the strong majority of our listeners are in the United States, and I think most people, when they… who work in comms here, hear the term Ryanair. They're aware it's an airline, but they're also aware that it had some like, something to do with social media. And that's like the connection.
Allison 11:38
And it’s a social media company that monetizes through air travel.
Sean 11:43
And I think Michael, you're to blame for that. And so I'm curious, just one how you got to Ryanair, and then maybe tell us, kind of the origin story there, but also maybe provide for the you know US audience, kind of why this was kind of a particularly interesting perfect storm.
Michael 12:03
Again, I tried to probably make up a few too many stories on the way, but it might have started off as community service, but for some. But yeah, look, I was navigating through social media in the traditional sense of a young social media manager climbing through the ranks working for numerous brands in the Irish and European market, and I was getting a little bit frustrated that I wasn't convincing enough brand marketeers and decision makers that there's more than one way to use these platforms. And we were coming to this stage in social where it was a very fake, filtered, you know, curated approach to the platforms. And brands 10x that by being perfectly polished, conservative and didn't really understand the inner workings of how we consume content on these platforms. So the frustration made me go to… client side. So I would have been working agency side for the best part of eight years. And I went to a brand called Paddy Power Betfair, and I did a stint there, which is a sports betting gambling company, Sister owners to FanDuel in the US, for those who are aware. And I served my time there, figuring things out, and still didn't really know how to solve this. So I eventually left there and went on another mission, and it was just this happy timing, I think, and that's the, I think that's the general trend of everything that I'm going to like link this back to. Yes, there was incredibly a good piece of strategy. We recruited and developed an incredible team, but timing and luck really, really helped me here. This job came just after Covid started to kind of decrease, and at this stage, travel was decimated for airlines, and the brief was a carte blanche responsibility on social media and actually doing the right thing of how Ryanair should operate as a brand. And I would have been a huge fan of Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Ryanair. They were all through my teen years and childhood. When you see a story like that from an Irish businessman who… he did go over to the US, he did spend some time with Spirit Airlines. He did steal the model and bring it back, but he put it on steroids, and what he built as an operation in the machine, we couldn't help but admire him. We also admired his, you know, his irreverence and his, you know, self-deprecating tone of voice that kind of built the Ryanair marketing brand in the olden days for a long period of time. So I applied for the job. I had a 30-minute interview, and I got a call the next day, and I got offered the job. Now, whether I did a amazing 30-minute interview or they were desperate to fill the position, I don't really know, but I managed to get it. And they gave me the time to absorb what was going around. They gave me time to put a good strategy in place. Well I was delivering the original day to day, and once I presented back the strategy, I got bought in, and I started to go on the journey of building the brand that I guess people know of it today.
Sean 15:02
What about their perspective? Why did they want someone like you? And I get the timing of where we were in the kind of post-Covid.
Allison 15:10
Why did they want someone like you?
Michael 15:13
It's a great question. I have no idea. I imagine on the call I was knowing Ryanair, the brand that it is, and knowing that they're a no bullshit operation, I gave them a very candid no bullshit interview. And I basically told them I am frustrated and fed up of how brands are operating in this space. I feel that there is a DNA within Ryanair's marketing and its brand of years that has not been brought through into these platforms, and I had, I guess, the seniority and the experience to actually carry it forward too. Yeah, and they took a punt. A punt, I'm very grateful for.
Allison 15:51
I'm sure they are too. How did you get to the insight that, like, elite tier shit-posting would be, would be the way forward. Like, how, were you yourself a shit-poster prior to Ryanair?
Michael 16:03
The latter question? Answer’s, yes, I probably would have been a bit of a straight-talker, shit-poster as well, and I would have naturally gravitated to the art of the one liner or the quick wit. I would be very quick wit in nature. But I don't think that had that influenced the strategy itself, per se, and I don't think the focus on the roasting of customers was the core strategy. Now it was a tactic that came from the strategy. But I took and pieced together the 4C’s brand strategy framework model. And if I'm being fully transparent, about six years prior to this, nobody, and including myself, in social were working from strategic frameworks. We were putting together content pillars. We were trying to make ourselves look so self-important that this was this shiny toy over here that no other marketeer could understand or touch, because we're the young generation who knew this. And I came to the realization that we haven't got a clue what we're talking about. So I started to learn about brand building and strategy. Read Binet and Field, read about how brands got started, actually learn the go-to material to figure this out. And I went, well, I need to put some sort of framework together so I can actually document and get to clarity of a strategy. So I used the 4C's, the brand framework model. Again, most or a lot of brands, you know, big brands like P&G would have used this for years, and it's based on company, category culture and the customer. So we would have mined insight, and we would have unpacked that insight to try and find a point of view, like from a company point of view, if I could simplify that, the core insight that came from there was Ryanair was a disruptor in the industry, but also a disruptor in marketing. Again, people might not be familiar, have seen the marketing of Ryanair in the past, in the 80s and 90s, it would have been very provocative, very self-deprecating, very irreverent. And then you had basically the spokesperson who was Michael O'Leary. And anytime Michael O'Leary goes in front of press, he's going to get global coverage, because he knew the art of generating publicity. So that disruptor DNA was there for many years, including a disrupter tone of voice. And again, if you go back and you actually watch a lot of Michael O'Leary's content and interviews of the past and compare them to the tone and the approach of the social tone, it's Michael. That's what it was born from. So we have this thing
Allison 11:18
Really founder centric.
Allison 18:20
Yeah, completely. And it's… it was, it was built and it worked, because Ryanair are never going to spend too much money on marketing. They obsess so much about the operation that marketing is… is a nice to have. But that doesn't mean you can't market. And PR and publicity was the domain lever of that. So we took that as, like, you know that hasn't disappeared or can't be a thing. And social is that space and place to generate word of mouth, if you can get it right. And we already had this in our system, so we went, Okay, well, like we can do this, because everyone else in the category is conservative premium, even though they're low-cost airlines, and they're all trying to be something they're not. And if you really are honest with yourself, like, if you're not flying first class, it is 35,000 feet in the air in a big sweaty box. It's not a pleasant experience. So why are people talking about it like that?
Allison 19:11
John and I were both just in those sweaty boxes yesterday.
Michael 19:15
So like, and they pandered to this, and it was all about the luxury of travel and the journey, not the destination. And if they talked about the destination, it was always blue ocean and palm trees. And if you think about, like as a brand, like you have no point of difference, no differentiation, nothing distinct. And when that comes onto social, it becomes even harder, because when you're scrolling at the speed everybody else is scrolling at, all you see is similar images, and if you remove the color of the brand and the logo, you probably can't differentiate the difference between any of these airlines. So when you look at the two of those, we simply just had to be ourselves. We had to disrupt our mentality, disrupt our behavior. We just needed to transfer it and actually find a way to look and behave the opposite of everyone else in the category. Then when you get it down to the other two, which is category and customer, this is where it starts again. Like, get really, really solid, or sorry, culture and the customer. Like, culture was interesting because, like, when you look at culture and social that, you know, we were coming at a time where I mentioned earlier, people were tired of this fake, filtered nature of social media and Instagram and Tiktok came to time, and it came when Covid happened, and it became this comfort blanket where people were being more raw and honest. They were sharing and processing all the crazy things that were happening in the world. And a lot of the Gen Zs would have, you know, used this as a way to process what was happening, and it allowed for, like, a dark type of humor and a different type of social to appear that was a little bit more raw and ready and rugged and real. So we leaned into that and went, Okay, well, if we have a brand that's like this, who doesn't like care about all the fluffy, premium things, and there's a desire there, we've got an instant connection. But the last piece is the one that really underpinned it, which was, again, customer. What we were seeing was the customer’s expectations of flying low cost were way too high. And like, it wasn't the boomers and it wasn't the Gen Zs. It… like the boomers, like Ryanair, democratized travel back in 1985, 86, 87. People flying from Dublin to London, London to Dublin, it cost about four or 500 bucks for like, a flight, and that was not accessible to much people at the time. Whereas Ryanair came, they became 50 Euro, like the boomer generation, could see Europe, travel Europe, go to the best and wonderful, sunny destinations multiple times a year because they could afford to. The Gen Z were the same. They didn't have money. They're tech savvy. They were able to do a return flight to Italy and for the price of a can of Coke and a packet of crisps, and they could do it because they were young, free, and single. The millennials was the real problem. They were playing off this.
Sean 21:47
It's always the millennials, Michael.
Michael 21:51
It’s the silver spoons in our mouths. We agree with the Celtic Tiger, the boom in the mid-2000s and the expectations of flying with Ryanair at the time for like, a 10 year flight, they were expecting hot towels, USB chargers, and a foot massage from the pilot, and, you know, we had to do something about it, because that's what was causing a lot of the discourse online, or the perception about the brand. Now, we're not very different than the other brands. Actually one of the most on-time airlines, one of the most efficient with the biggest network. Yes, I still have a bit of the Kool Aid in my system. But, you know, it was unnecessary. So it was, that was the problem we then unpacked to solve. The three other things was the way we looked, we approached, and how we sounded. So again, the problem we solved was customer’s expectations were way too high, and that was being played on social media. So we wanted to find a way to, you know, decrease the friction around flying with Ryanair, to hate us less and find a way to do it in an entertaining, dark humored way that would get the message across. And that's where the crux of the strategy was. So then we went about trying to do it. And we did it with kind of two main levers. One was, again, reactive and community, which the things that a lot of people would associate Ryanair to, which was the newsjacking, the tapping into like things that were happening in the world, and indirectly or directly, bringing it back to the airline in some shape or form. And then there was always on, which was, this was the one that was the friction changer. It was explaining the terms and conditions. It was explaining the business model. Now that sounds pretty boring when it comes to content, but not how we did it.
Allison 24:13
Yeah, you didn’t do a boring Q and A or whatever.
Michael 24:13
No, not at all. We found the pain point of the friction people complained about, and we flipped it then to explain the reason why that friction was in the process. Like, take an example. Planes on the ground cost more than planes in the air. So the second you get down and you taxi, money's on the clock. So people are put into the stairwell, they're brought into the tarmac. Ryanair do this thing, which is called a 25-minute turnaround, which means then you're part of the process. But people thought they were being treated like cattle being herded on and off a plane, and they were just, this is not a pleasant experience. But that's because you didn't know why.
Allison 23:56
You want to pay less...
Michael 23:58
There you go. There you go. But nobody knew. But again, people, the privileged generation, just started to complain, because that's what they do. So we then went on finding ways to then change people's perceptions, use content that cleverly educated on the process, and we started to see a shift.
Sean 24:13
I love kind of your your perspective. I mean, use the 4Cs and you talked about your founder, but I mean effectively, I mean Allison and I worked with a lot of tech companies, a lot of startups, and they're evolving, and they’re going from being really small to really big, really fast. And there's a core DNA to all these companies. And basically, you know, my belief is you never can break the DNA. You only can accentuate it. But likewise, British Airways has a DNA, and it's probably not that interesting, but maybe it is, I don't know. But like, if you got a call from British Airways today and said, Hey, we love what you did with Ryanair, we'd love to… for you to make British Airways way more interesting and way more edgy. Can you do that for us?
Michael 24:55
Yeah. So I start by saying, Tell them to stop using the word edgy and grow. I would try and find their why. And again, do I know what that answer is, no. But I would follow the similar process to unpack that. Now there was a piece of work they've done recently around the business, leisure, and the third reason why you travel, which I thought was a wonderful proposition, and they did it with, which, with such lovely creative because, again, probably the association many people have is business or higher status people fly British Airways because it's a more classy airline, and clearly they were struggling with, again, capacity. So they wanted to show the other reasons why people should fly British Airways. And I thought it was a really good piece of brand strategy work, but I think they've failed to manifest it properly on social to bring that to life a little bit more. And when it comes to their tone of voice, they don't have to lose their heritage and what they are as a brand. They just need to modernize it in ways that can work for different audiences. Because if they keep treating it like, you know, they have been in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and try to, you know, market to people who are maybe of an older demographic, they're not going to win the new customer for British Airways. And that's where it becomes a struggle. And so, yeah, like, I couldn't give you a proper answer, but what I could do is I can play with a little bit, with another airline. For example, EasyJet would be a competitor of Ryanair's in the European market. And if you take what Ryanair were doing around decreasing friction, about the model, you look at the position, about the third reason why you travel for British Airways, there's other insights that are out there that could give the likes of an EasyJet a point of difference. And one of those is not all reasons why we travel are happy moments, and people always travel for other reasons. They're emigrating because they have to see a better life. They are maybe traveling home because a loved one passed away. They're probably traveling because of heartache and breakup. What am I getting to here? Like, it becomes a really strong insight that unlocks an emotional reaction or creates tension in marketing, and that's essentially what we have to do. And they can't just do, speak, or act like what British Airways are doing, or they're just going to be a poorer version of it. They can't really approach what Ryanair are doing, because they own that position. And again, people will just call them out for trying to copy. And many airlines have. What I always try and do is finding and unlocking an insight that people can own, that nobody else has. And if you own that insight of you know, there are other reasons why people on a plane of 200 people are traveling, even if it's not like remotely connected to the reasons why others are traveling that time, it still hits emotionally. It still becomes memorable, like funny enough. I actually have a TV script in my brain for EasyJet based on that insight, using a Zach Bryan song called Something in the Orange. And if you listen to that song, it would absolutely put you into tears. Build it with that emotion. Build a lovely story around the emotional reaction to those reasons why. Now you've got something that becomes memorable.
Allison 27:45
Yeah, and that's a totally different strategy. I imagine selling people on this strategy. You obviously relied heavily on the existing DNA of the company, but was there resistance to this internally? I can only imagine trying to explain to BCV, you know, Bain Capital Ventures, where I work, that hey, we're gonna, we're gonna be really honest about what the value proposition is, and in some cases, that's gonna result in us kind of roasting customers. What was the reaction internally, and how did you manage it?
Michael 28:12
There was plenty of resistance, but most of the resistance came from people who didn't understand Ryanair and who were marketeers who came into the business. But I got a really good, sage piece of advice a few months into it, when it was happening, as we started to push the boundaries more from the chief technical officer. And funnily enough, it was the day before we put out quite a dramatical post about the UK and Boris Johnson during the Downing Street parties issues they had. And he basically said, if you're going to survive in this business, Michael, you need to do things and then ask for forgiveness. So that really stuck in my mind at the time of, you know, I'm going to have to be brave here, because I really do believe in this. I really understand that this is right for this brand, because I don't think the way we behaved and operated would have worked for most other brands. Very few have that because it's justifiably in our DNA. And, you know, we got the other components right and the timing right to make it work. So it took a while. And there were moments where people would constantly question it, but I would ask them to look, blame me. I'm… you can put and throw me in the fire like something happens. But it was funny enough that moment, that day after, we started to talk about these, this issue during, you know, the Tories in the UK. And why was that important for us? Because travel was decimated. This business suffered dramatically during these times, and you had the governments in the UK going and behaving and doing what they want, and that kind of frustrated the nation. And nobody was saying it to the level that it should have been. So we did it on our behalf, and did it in a very funny way. But when that went live, my boss nearly lost it. He popped over the desk and looked at me. He said, What the hell have you done? And I literally went, please leave it up. Just stick with me. If it goes south, you can let it be on my head. But what was crazy then and the things that unfolded, thankfully, is a couple of days later, there was an article put in the Financial Times where it screamed about, brands need to be more Ryanair when it came to operating, being true to themselves and how they were talking about things in an irreverent way. A few days later, after that, that same piece of content was put on page seven of the print of the Sunday Times newspaper. Why is this important? Because Michael O'Leary and the investors of Ryanair are not on social media, watching funny TikToks or skits on Twitter. They're reading the Financial Times and they're reading the Sunday Times. We actually got little old social media content into their media consumption, and once that happened, we got two handwritten letters from the CEO of Ryanair, and the CEO of Ryanair group, Michael O'Leary, saying, Keep up the good work, signed by him on our desk. That was literally the golden ticket that any other person in the business could not say anything, because if the gaffer and the boss was saying, Go for it, we can go for it. It gave us the permission. And from that point
Michael 31:00
You got the cover.
Michael 31:02
I got the cover and I got the control to do it.
Sean 31:04
That's awesome. I mean, you mentioned before, Ryanair, you're kind of on this, on this journey, trying to find a place where social strategy wasn't an oxymoron. Why is this such a blind spot for so many marketing and communications leaders? Why? Why can't they see social for what it is?
Michael 31:21
Because it's still treated as a nice to have and an afterthought. Now, again, that's the majority, not the minority. There are plenty of brands who are investing the money, but even those who are investing money, I don't believe they're thinking strategically, either. I think they're just out screaming others and stealing with pride ideas that are happening out there. I just think it hasn't been considered and the shift hasn't happened, but I believe there's a catch 22 with that, though. Like C suite and CEOs know that social is the opportunity, because it's where the majority of people are spending their time these days, but we as professionals have not done a very good job of fighting our case and getting the respect we need in those rooms, and that's why I sought out to understand strategy more, of then being able to communicate it in those rooms, those 30 minutes you might have once or twice a year, that it's not just here is a viral Tiktok we made. Actually talk brand and business and make it make sense to the people who are… who are making the biggest decisions. And if we don't have that, like we're still going to struggle. And I do believe there's, there is a big absence still in strategy. And I think the problem is because my generation who started in this industry, we were the juniors in the office when social became a thing. We rode that wave. We were the digital savvy generation at that time. And we got lucky. We have people who are in heads of social roles in big brands around the world on incredible money that if you were really asked them to present a strategy to you, they can't, and that's the scary part, and they're not going to say that publicly, because they don't want to put their careers in jeopardy. But that is the reality right now. So when you have a generation of senior social media people who say they talk strategy when really they don’t, they talk in tactics, who copy and paste what most other brands do without really understanding how to have a point of difference for the brand, and then a C suite, who just won't buy into it. They'll give you budget, they'll give you some headcount, they'll give it an increase. It's likely because they know the media, it needs to shift there, because that's where people are spending their time. But there's a huge gap in the middle to try and fix this and like it's why I created what I've created in Slice. Because my job is to change decision-maker’s minds with better strategy. My job is to coach internal teams so they actually understand it more and deliver and be focused and not get you know, blindsided by the navel gazing of a big green owl doing disruptive things on the internet, thinking that's the only way to win, or a talking airplane being sassy to their customers, because there's more ways to skin a cat. We just need to figure that out. And I think there's a huge amount of timeless truths of marketing education needed for social media professionals that just doesn't exist right now, or they're not willing to do it, and we've decoupled ourselves. Because, again, I don't know if you're you're, you… This resonates in any way. But when and when social became a thing, it became this land grab for who wanted to own a creative agencies, PR agencies, digital agencies, and then social media agencies became a thing. It then decoupled from the rest of marketing, because it was this, oh, this new, elusive thing that nobody understands or has a clue about. It was special. And then we just sat over here in our little island, and we were like, Oh, let's figure this out, because nobody knows. But we forgot to actually figure out, well, how do we actually build brands? And that's the gap of that is there. And unless we close that, it's going to be a long time before others will do better.
Sean 34:47
At the same time, I think on the marketing side and the brand side, in some companies, there's just so much process, and there's so much like this kind of law of brand. And 4Cs is a good framework. But there's just, like, this kind of rigidity around doing things, around having process, around briefs, around all this stuff that kind of gets in the way of actually getting work out there and making shit happen. And so, like, I do think that there's probably a happy medium that social brings to the brand side. And meanwhile, over here, like Allison and I like working in comms, we're constantly trying to, like, disintermediate what's going on in the world, all these conversations happening. We're connected into social, too. And I just think that a lot of this just hasn't congealed yet, and I just posted for a role of head of social community at the company I'm at now, or firm, and I'm trying to figure this out in real time. Like, what is the perfect archetype for this job right now to sit between these things? And so I'm curious what you think?
Michael 35:54
Yeah, like, again, like, there's no right or wrong, but it's not black and white either. Like, strategy and social and like, until you have kind of and like, if I'm being honest, like, brand strategy, if you're not considering being a social-first brand with your brand strategy, I think you're already losing. Like, do you need to have a separate social strategy? I don't think you do. And like, it all depends on the size of the brand, the life cycle of the brand, the size of the team. Your marketing makes a media mix, because there might be some reasons where you don't need a director of social or a head of social in your operation at all. You actually have a brand manager who's social-first, and you have all the social-first expertise within the marketing team. So it's very hard to give the right diagnosis, and then it depends on the actual output of the strategy and how you want to step up and operate. And this is where people can get it wrong, too, where they think the first hire is ahead of social. And the salary could be $300,000, which is a lot of money, and they end up being this overpaid Community Manager, where they are still very executional. Imagine being paid that much money for an executional role. You could probably hire two midweights or juniors to double your output, your work, because you think that's the right thing to do, and it… like, there will be frustrations, there will be tensions, and then you end up not getting the best out of your investment and your time and your resource. So it's very hard to give you a black and white answer. We… you do need somebody who is really good at content strategy. You need somebody who understands, who can be brave in the right way. You need somebody who can talk up and talk down in the business, and that's that gap we're talking about, to have the ability to educate your senior stakeholders and educate your juniors. And the other thing is, will this person be managing many people? And if they like, if they don't have any direct reports, I wouldn't be putting them that high up. I would be finding somebody who has the potential, if not two, I would be then leaning on somebody and upskilling somebody else in the marketing department to be more social-first, and their growth is to be educated, and then when the person develops and grows within the business, then reward them and incentivize them, and bring… find a pathway to make this work. Because we go to top heavy, we're going to have very expensive executors. And I don't think that's a very smart use of the business's time or budget.
Sean 38:08
Yeah, in my case, looking for this role, I'm looking for someone who will actually make every comms person and every brand person on the team social like social thinkers and, like, active on social. And I don't want this people to say, Oh, we have a social team. Let's go send it over to this person. They'll, they'll handle it in this expensive executor. Like, I need, I need, like, an entire team of social first people. And so that's that, that's, I think, where I'm headed with this. But like, you know, I mean, this is, like, at a very real time consideration. And I love this conversation for it, because I'm learning a ton.
Michael 38:44
That's a great brief for somebody.
Allison 38:46
Yeah, and I'm curious, like, you know, in some cases, at companies I work with that are earlier startups, obviously, than a firm, but people are saying, like, let's just get AI to do it. Or, like, Hey, I can't we just, like, get creative from, from the AI, you know, or whatever. Like, let's just, let's just, let's just use Midjourney, or, you know, things like this. Obviously I have opinions about whether or not that's a good idea. But curious to get your take, you know, Michael, and yours too, Sean as sort of like a growthier organization now that that's public. Do you feel like AI is going to take parts of this job, or be… or help this job, or or, How does AI play in?
Michael 39:20
it makes the mundane things easier in its simplest form. Like when you think about inside mining or finding trends or spotting patterns of what's happening out there on the internet, it's going to help you find that faster. It's going to make the production process leaner and smarter. It's going to make the admin side of things, where a lot of our time is being spent on, to free up, to be more strategic, to be more creative, to think more about the work. Is it going to make the output better? In cases it will. But again, what you prompt and put into that prompt as the creative output? That's the gold, not what you you see the final product. Because the tech and the sophistication of making video content in that ilk is going to be amazing and really impressive, but unless the idea is strong enough, it's not going to win. So it's just going to enable the most creative people and be more creative. I think it's going to be very good for the jack of all trades-style professional in our space, where what's happened with marketing is we've just siloed so much of the journey. And this is probably why brands aren't building brands as best as they can. And everything is performance driven to the nth degree that you have so many different people working in singular specialist roles that aren't really thinking like brand and other platforms in the way they need to, to see how it all connects and joins up. So, if anything, it's going to take all those kind of siloed roles in where you've got AI agents who are optimizing paid media or optimizing search, that we already had roles, pull out those roles, bring people up here to actually be the lever pullers and the thinkers, the doers, and have a more of a wider perspective of how to build brands across multiple platforms, rather than silos on their own.
Allison 41:05
That's a good vision for the future of marketing, where everybody gets to be more of a strategist, and we all have these execution tools at our fingertips.
Sean 41:14
That's great. Michael, tell us about what you're doing now with Slice. You said you want to make yourself null and void and set teams up to win without you.
Michael 41:23
You’ll be on the yacht.
Sean 41:27
Yeah. Tell us about that genius strategy.
Michael 41:30
Yeah. Look again, when you think of how you need to position yourself, like when I set up, we're a consultancy of sorts. And again I again, I hate marketing buzzwords, but I probably need to get over myself a little too, because that's what people understand, what these roles are. So maybe I need to just stop but, but essentially, once I left Ryanair, two of the greatest things that I think I'm really good at is developing strategy, hiring teams and building operations, and then handing over the keys and showing them how to do it. But you know, that's the crux of what we do. And the reason why we the line is we aim to make ourselves redundant is because there's nothing worse than a consultant who lingers around a business for years upon years upon years with old-school frameworks and ways of thinking just to continue to get there. I don't feel I'm doing my work if I don't make impact, and I don't show people how to do it and then hand over. So it's again, it's a good marketing line. Do we want to continue our relationship with some brands long-term? Of course, you do. As they grow, we grow too, but don't let that get in the way of a good copy line. But in essence, it's true, like we want a legacy of trying to make social media better and social media for brands better, and if we can offload really good thinking and upskill the next generation to think more like marketeers, but in the social space, then we're onto something, and then we can prove that these are platforms that, if done right, can do amazing things for brands that isn't just trend-hopping and all the things we're all guilty of behaving in right now.
Sean 42:58
If you're successful, what's the world look like in a few years? And other kind of smart social people are successful.
Michael 43:03
What does the world look like? Oh, that's a great question. Well, in a few years, I want to be back farming, so I'm not in this space or place anymore, and maybe doing some consulting in some sort of hay barn with some really, um, big budget marketeers, touching grass. Um, I want brands to show that they are delivering metrics and things that can shift their brand and not pander to the platforms. I think what's going on in social right now is the copy and paste mentality of what everybody's doing is just feeding the algorithms rather than actually building brands. And when you do all of this trend-chasing and trend-hopping, it's killing trends faster. The life cycle of it is worse. And when people consume the content, the user and they're scrolling and seeing hundreds of brands doing the same thing in the same way, we're just doing what we were doing on Instagram five, six years ago with the conservative brand, and what ends up happening is people will remember the trend, but they won't remember the brand. And our job is to be… build brands that are memorable. And if we can get more people to find all the different ways to use these platforms to be more memorable, I would be very, very happy.
Sean 44:19
Speaking of being memorable, one question we ask every guest at the end is, what is, what is keeping your attention? You see a lot of stuff in a day in, day out, like, what's grabbing you? What's like, what's reaching out?
Michael 44:33
This is always such a tough one, because, again, this is the, I guess, the byproduct of being having a… or having an unhealthy relationship online, you don't remember as much of the good work. But one brand that I do love, and I really give it kudos, is a brand called Frida. And Frida is actually a postpartum mother care brand originated from the US, and I just love what they're doing, because they are being unapologetic in the realities of postpartum mothers and the journey of motherhood in this early years. But they're not doing it in a way where it's a pamper side, where it's all warm and fuzzy and cute. It's actually the realities and the shit show that goes on being a parent, the nappy tsunamis, the uncomfortable nature of going through healing after having a baby, the you know, the trials and tribulations of breastfeeding, and they do it in such a creative way that just makes it, you know, it takes the taboo off the topic, especially for people who aren't mothers who would be quite awkward seeing or experiencing this. They're just, they're breaking down the barriers. But they've got so creative in so many ways, where, like, they're trying to, like, change the stigma over breastfeeding and breast milk, and they launched a campaign recently where they they deliver the breast milk ice cream and they set up a breast milk ice cream shop. And they, like, they were, they just playfully went on the whole like, like, cannot, can people have it or not? Is it safe or not? And they use a clever way, just to remove the stigma over, you know, consuming breast milk in public. They had this big tanker.
Allison 46:08
We are mammals at the end of the day.
Michael 46:10
Yeah, I know. They had this big tanker going down through Times Square with, like, breast milk on the milk tanker, and it just grabbed everybody's attention. I just love how creative they're getting with it. I love what they're taking a brand that is, would normally approach this with very tutorial education, clinical, warm, fuzzy style, and totally took it in a different way that's breaking down barriers in a way that works on social and everybody's talking about it, including people who don't necessarily like it, but that's what I like about what they do, because they're creating tension, and tension is good for marketing. And there's one little quote, like Jane Woodward, who was the founder of Dermalogica, and like, this is a cracker. Like, I saw it on a Diary of a CEO podcast many, many moons ago, but she landed this line, “You need to piss off the 80% to win the 20%.” Like, you can't be all things to all people. If you do, you're just going to be vanilla. Like, some will like you, but not a lot. Some will hate you, but not a lot. You're on the fence, and that's probably 99.9% of brands right now, and it's those that are getting off the fence. You know, evoking emotion, disrupting in some way. And disrupting doesn't mean insult your customers. Disrupting is doing what Frida is doing, which is like fantastic, and just finding a way to be a bit braver that will get a reaction, and that's half the battle. Like we can simply, once we get to those points, it can be quite simple, and you get creative for repetition with it, and now that you start to actually, you know, deliver recall, brand awareness, uplift ,and become a brand that people might even think about when they're in the busy shopping aisles or those crazy spaces where they have to make that decision on what the hell we buy.
Sean 47:39
You’ve got me fired up, Michael.
Allison 47:45
I’m ready to fight this battle.
Sean 47:46
Yeah, I know, I’m gunna get out there and do some war.
Allison 47:47
Let's be brave.
Sean 47:50
Yeah. No, seriously. But I really appreciate it. And this was awesome. And it was, it was great perspective. This also wraps up our last episode of our first season, and I think it wraps it up in a really nice way, because we've taken something that people see as really tactical and turned it into the strategic and kind of the strategic level that it deserves. So thank you for… thank you for closing us out, Michael. I really appreciate it.
Allison 48:15
Really appreciate this. This was fun.
Michael 48:17
Appreciate it, and congrats on the end of the series.
Allison 48:19
You didn't roast us on this episode, even though I'm sure we deserve it.
Michael 48:21
No, no, no, see, this is what I mean. I play a character in Ryanair. I'm really just a nice person.
Sean 48:30
I look forward to touching grass with you some day.
Michael 48:32
Amazing. Bring your wellies.
Sean 48:34
Okay. Cheers.
Allison 48:39
Thank you for joining us today for Attention Shift for today's deep dive on communication strategy. Check out our sponsors, Delve, at Delve.news and Mike Worldwide at MW.com Please like and subscribe to attention shift on Apple, Spotify, or your podcast platform of choice, and we'll see you in a couple weeks for our next episode.