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Lairy O’Leary…
Posted by ed in blog July 27, 2011I was quoted in Marketing magazine’s cover story yesterday in regard to the sane and rational Michael O’Leary’s alleged plans to reposition Ryanair as a ‘green’ airline. We’ve covered this ground many times before, not least in our ‘Greenwash Guide’ where we pointed out that being ‘best in class’ was no great claim when the ‘class’ of product or service in question was pretty unsustainable! The greenest SUV! The most ethical sweatshop (mild perspiration only)! You get the drift…
Now Michael and I also have form. I have blogged on my personal slow travel website several times about his various rantings over the years, here, here and most delightfully here (as well as this lovely little musical number ‘There’s no such fecking thing as a fecking flight for 50p’!). But the thing is the argument Ryanair are proclaiming to use isn’t new. In the Greenwash Guide we even mocked up the ultimate ‘greenwash’ ad – perhaps unsuprisingly featuring a faked airline called ‘Greenjet’ - only to see the spoof advert practically exactly mimmicked by this advert from FinnAir. Incidentally this ad was then banned by the Advertising Standards Authority on two counts, for positioning flying as somehow ‘eco-friendly’ and for the claim that new planes were somehow greener than older ones.
So, when a well established environmental skeptic like O’Leary (what does he actually care about?) suggests he might make a green claim I say ‘go for it’. How this caring position sits with a brand proposition that is purely about ‘cheap’ (that also taps into a dark masochistic aspect of the British psyche – no matter how badly he treats us we’ll go back for me ‘cos it’s cheap. So cheap. Cheap! Never mind the myriad hidden costs, entrapping mechanisms for additional fees and payments etc) remains to be seen. ‘We don’t give a stuff about customer care - but we do care about climate change!’ is an interesting angle…
More to the point I suspect in reality this is yet another of Mikey’s tactics for free publicity. It ranks alongside ‘standing room only’ and ‘charging for the toilets’ as another cynical ploy to make headlines for nothing and gain pro bono column inches entirely scott-free…
What do you think? Green epiphany or same old Machiavellian irresponsibility?
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17:23
Hi Ed,
Great blog.. though…
…. it is sad to say… but maybe Saint Michael of O’Leary has a very clever marketing point… There are a few travelers out there that maybe persuaded that flying a ‘lower carbon’ airline could assuage them of the guilt of them flying as much as they already do so the passenger will respond by saying “OK, just one more short haul weekend city break again this year as Saint Michael has blessed his fleet with green fairy dust” reflecting of the tiny emission improvement of his slightly newer fleet. Some people will grab any excuse to maintain and increase their unsustainable behaviours – it could be that his Green Epiphany is that it will boost passenger numbers, increase flights and.. oh God, also release more of Beelzebub own vapours .. CO2..
Simon.
20:37
Hi Ed, just trawling through old emails that I never got around to reading! I hope you remember me, Geraldine from Forum, looked after the Masters course for a few years (am at the Fawcett Society now). My niece has just got a job at Ryanair – on the desk in Dublin Airport, while she tries to get through the summer before she goes back to college. It’s really really hard to raise any of this stuff with them…. family are all so bloody delighted that she has a job given the current situation in Ireland, and I just try to keep my mouth shut!!