Better #6

Welcome back to Better - and to a very special edition.

Why is it special? Because it features a guest who has done some serious disrupting in the global social media space, and all from a very strategic POV.

Michael Corcoran was head of social media at Ryanair between July 2021 and November 2023. The airline basically wrote the script for sassy socials, and Michael and his team have influenced countless social and marketing pros around the world with their work.

I interviewed Michael recently for an article about why brands fail miserably on social media (and how strategy can fix it). You can check it out at the Spinoff if you’re interested.

But I also asked him a whole bunch of questions that went a lot deeper into his strategic process, and how he unlocked creativity in his team while at Ryanair.

It is fascinating stuff, and pulls back the curtain on just how much thinking went on behind the scenes to inform the airline’s approach.

I learned so much chatting to Michael, I really hope you do, too.

Cheers,
Seamus 👋

I’ve set this up a little differently than usual. Instead of the usual Q&A, I’ve grouped Michael’s quotes by topic and merged them together.

We covered a bunch of topics, from strategy to creativity to AI and more. It was a pretty wild, breathless ride.

Here’s the interview 👇

On developing and executing a social media strategy
So my process for developing a strategy is, I frame it against four variables. Those are: brand, category, customer, and the social media landscape. 

In that I start to identify insights across all those four variables. And then I start to sum that up, find insight gaps, opportunities that have intersections or commonalities that actually can be distilled down into three or four really salient opportunities. 

I then identify the problem or the gap, and I try and articulate the best way I think the platforms can solve that problem, or gap or opportunity. That could be one [thing], it could be two, it could be three.

And from there, I start actually building out the strategy. And I set it up very high, I develop a mission, the articulation of the problem we're trying to solve, and that's normally quite wafty, it's the North Star, it's something that you never think you'll reach, but it sits there at the top of your strategy as something you try to aspire to be and deliver all the time, and the big problems you need to solve. 

I then break it down into a vision, which is the idealized solution for that problem. Not too much detail, but enough in order to actually chase it, similar to the mission. It’s not breaking down how we actually do it.

Underneath that then is actually the strategy, a statement about how we're going to solve all of those problems with guiding principles underneath that will navigate us there. They're not hard and fast rules because you have to have the freedom to test, learn and adapt as the platforms change. But these guiding principles get us from where we are now to where we want to be.

And they come in many forms, they could be very creatively led, they could be tonally led, they could be stylized, it could be how you work with partners, it could be media, it all comes down to how you think with your time, resource and budget you can deliver on that strategy. 

So then I keep on distilling it down to a point where I actually have a documented strategy on a page that we can stick to a wall, and everybody in the business can follow and buy into. And it increases the likelihood of us trying to consistently deliver that. It maximizes the chance of actually delivering on it, changing the dial and having impact.

Because even if the strategy is 50% or 60% right, if you consistently deliver it, time after time, you'll actually find it will do something, and that's much better than doing nothing. 

So with the strategy in place what I do is I start to look at the team or the structure. I look at do we have a team fit for purpose to execute on that strategy based on the guiding principles, and if not, I retrain, or I find, or I rebuild the team based on that.

We then put the tools and processes in place - content strategy, channel strategy, production processes, and start working through, operationally, how we deliver. And I create these systems.

Then I try and condition the team, to teach them the skills and creativity to execute on it time and time and time and time again, and I build this ecosystem of output, and try and win in this space.

On organic vs paid
Everyone's looking towards the success of Ryanair as the way to do it, but Ryanair is the exception not the norm.

We took a very specific approach to it, because we needed low-cost, high-return reach. And we knew we had to be really captivating, polarising, and attention-grabbing to win in that space organically. 

However, the norm don't need that. The norm are usually budget heavy, and have the luxury of spend and resource. And in most cases, the most prime opportunity for them to properly use it is a paid-first approach. So the whole process changes.

On encouraging creative ideas
I set up what's called the Cutting Room Floor. To be and act in the Ryanair voice, you've got to be very provocative, you've got to get so close to the line that you’re just about over it. Some of the people in the team could naturally do it and some of the team needed time to condition.

I also needed to see how far they could push their creativity without putting up too many barriers. Perimeters and barriers are good for the creative process for some people, but for the majority, once you go into a business or into a job, it’s ‘you can't talk about this, you can't do this, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t’. You're already creating creative blocks. 

The Cutting Room Floor was this safe space for my team. I’d say, ‘Forget about the rules, here's some basic guiding principles about what I want you to do and how I want the content to sound and look like, and whatever comes in here is only seen by us, and nobody judges us. It's a place for you to create it and get it out of your mind and start making content’.

And eventually, when they got in there, they were conditioning themselves, they got confident at what they were doing. Funnily enough a lot of the ideas that came in there actually went out [on our channels] in the end. It stopped barriers to creativity and empowered them to get really creative. 

And that's where a lot of brands are struggling at the moment creatively, because the second you go in you're given a brand book, you’re given dos and don'ts, you’re given the policy, and if it’s a very heavily compliant brand with a lot of regulation, then it's already a difficult challenge, let alone then putting more barriers in place. 

You just need to let people get creative and then pull them back a little bit to make sure it's shaped to the level and line you're most happy with.

On having too much data
Did we ever trying to see how [social media] impacted on ticket sales? We didn’t, but we made that decision because when you work in marketing, and especially in the world of digital marketing, there's a thing as having too much data and connecting the dots too much that it ends up making things so focused on the step by step attribution of performance, you lose the essence of what you're trying to do to actually drive brand awareness. And you actually make things more difficult to win in that space. 

So in order to make sure that there's a point of separation, we decided to not try and measure its financial impact. 

On social media trends
When people are focused on trends, they're immediately focusing on tactics. And the biggest thing I want to shake off is ‘stop wasting your time on small tactical things that just aren't doing anything’. Take a few steps backwards.

On the algorithm

Most of the things people say about the algorithm are absolute horse shit. Even the algorithms don’t know how they work. 

But essentially, you need a small pool of people where your content is served, they need to react and engage very quickly, in order for the machines to tell you, ‘Okay, this looks like it's a good piece of content, now we're going to push it out to the wider network’. 

And you need that. And if you don't look for ways to grab attention of an audience, and don't find ways to try and reach low-engage users, you're never going to grow your brand on the platform.

We need to reach low-engaged users, as the high-engaged users already know about you. And yes you need to do a a certain amount of stimulating, you know, retention, keeping the high-engaged users alive, and keeping them interested. But in order to grow, you've got to break that mould.

On artificial intelligence in social media
You'll hear all this AI wank but AI is going to be interesting in that it will make the mediocre people in the world of creativity and social media redundant, and let the creative people flourish. It's going to make the mundane day-to-day tasks easier, but it's not going to help you stand out and be creatively different on the platforms.

It will make vanilla shit even more vanilla, and that's the biggest fear. 

On aspirational content

Brands think everyone looks for aspiration, whereas the majority of people want relatable moments and things that they can connect to. And if you're looking for that connection, relatability wins the majority of the time over aspiration. 

And that doesn't mean you cannot be aspirational on the platform. That doesn't mean you can't deliver really good storytelling with premium content. But that's only if it's right and you can actually do it well.

On opportunities for public sector social

There's a place for councils and governments and politicians to win if they find that little hook. But the one thing they have to be able to do is be open to failing and failing fast. To be willing to test and learn and to let the audience decide, because that is the most important thing. Otherwise you'll be dead by committee, over-engineering it, overthinking it, or over-polishing it.

Instead, have a simplified strategic view, have simplified guiding principles - not hard and fast rules - that go back to the strategy every time. And let the audience decide. Iterate, iterate, iterate. You will find something that you can deliver, that will reach and have some sort of impact. It mightn’t be at the RyanAir level, but it will do something.

Quick 6 with Michael Corcoran…

1. Strategy or tactics?

Strategy.

2. Favourite platform?
I used to love Twitter and I still kind of do, but weirdly enough I'm starting to like LinkedIn again because it's the most boring place ever and it's probably the biggest opportunity to disrupt. I do love Instagram as well. To me, Instagram is the most all-in-one social media channel.

3. Least favourite platform?

It would probably be Facebook at the moment. It's still a powerful place to reach people with paid media but it's just offering nothing at the moment to many people. It's just become an exercise every evening to see what the family are doing.

4. One public sector account to follow?
In the UK the trade union account they've kicked off is absolutely amazing. What they do on TikTok is absolutely fabulous.

5. One non-public sector account to follow?
New Zealand radio TikTok - the RockFM I think is one of them. Their content on social media is comedy gold. The sketch they do, friends' nicknames, I think. And there's another one where the ‘girl math’ trend came from. I love New Zealand radio stations on TikTok, I binge on them all the time, and I think as content creators, radio stations in New Zealand are probably up there with the best of them.

6. Something you wish you’d known earlier in your career?
No matter how much you explain this to people: ‘followers does not equal reach’. It blows my mind that people still think about it that way. If I knew that nobody would believe that, or there would still be people who think that the amount of followers you have is the amount of reach you have on social, I probably wouldn't have started my career in social media and would have just went back farming.

Ok, that’s it for this edition, and for 2023.

I will leave you with these words of wisdom from Michael:

“Without strategy you're just throwing shit at a wall and hoping to make it stick.”

Make 2024 the year you get super strategic with your content and social media.

Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year. I hope you get some well-earned rest and perhaps a bit of a break from your phone(s).

I’ll see you in January for more tips on how to get a little bit Better 👋