What 'bar room brawler' Ryan Air can teach us and the BBC about PR

I made a commitment some time ago to never again fly Ryan Air, having flown with them from London (actually closer to Ipswich) Stansted to Valencia. Personally, I would rather have tried swimming there.

So it's fair to say I'm not a fan, but that’s not to say I’m not willing to learn from them. Normally the lessons we learn from Ryan Air of course are of the ‘how not to…’ variety, but the budget airline’s run-in with the BBC’s Panorama is a text book lesson in crisis PR – though from a school that isn’t for all tastes.

Ryan Air has published all correspondence between itself and the BBC ahead of the programme (you can find it here, for now) revealing a number of things. (Thanks to Mark Pinsent for flagging.)

Firstly, Ryan Air offered the BBC an uncensored interview with outspoken CEO Michael O’Leary. The BBC declined.

Having sat on both sides of the journalist/PR divide I see this as a coup for Ryan Air. Of course the BBC wasn’t going to accept that offer. It could never guarantee that, and I’m sure Ryan Air knew this.

I’m sure O’Leary would have behaved impeccably but no editor can ever guarantee something won’t be edited for any number of reasons. But that is now by-the-by. Simply by making the BBC decline the interview, Ryan Air can now assume some moral high ground and claim the broadcaster did so in the interests of bias. For a public increasingly informed by an anti-BBC media, that will play well.

Secondly, throughout the correspondence Ryan Air has referred to a “hatchet job” being carried out by Panorama, making repeat references to an apparent bias or axe to grind at the broadcaster. And ahead of broadcast the phrase “hatchet job” is already becoming synonymous with Panorama. Currently a Google search for: "hatchet job" "Panorama" "BBC" yields 2,180 mentions and counting - now, that can't be good for a programme with the world’s longest running reputation for quality TV journalism.

And thirdly, as any closing-time brawler will tell you, Ryan Air has taken the important measure of getting in the first punch, bringing its “hatchet job” accusations to a head the day of the broadcast. It's not pretty but it's effective - which in many respects may be how Ryan Air would like to be regarded.

As The Independent notes, neither side emerges from the disclosure with much credit, but that is against the backdrop of a Ryan Air reputation which has far less to lose than the BBC.

An interesting aside to all of this regards Panorama’s own understanding of PR. An email from a Panorama staffer suggests Ryan Air, and specifically O’Leary, is actively “anti-PR” in approach.

The BBC type doubtless drew this assumption from all the coverage Ryan Air receives branding it “cheap” and “budget” – admittedly with all that entails. But who drives that coverage? Just look at the Google Trends chart of buzz and news coverage (right) generated by Ryan Air, blue line, opposed to Virgin Atlantic, regarded universally as a 'PR'-success story, orange line.

Now tell me who is "anti-PR".

What the BBC journalist clearly means is that Ryan Air doesn’t do shiny, fluffy PR. But it is undoubtedly brilliant in PRing its core messages (‘we’re cheap and nasty but more often than not, we’ll get you there’ to paraphrase), whether you find those messages questionable or not.