Case Study Of Ryanair Ltd.

Ryanair Ltd. is an Irish low cost airline with its primary operational bases at Dublin and London Stansted. Ryanair was founded in 1984 as "Danren Enterprises” by Christopher Ryan, Liam Lonergan and Irish businessman Tony Ryan. The airline was shortly thereafter renamed "Ryanair” and began operations in 1985. (Wikipedia, 2016)

In 2013, Ryanair was both the largest European airline by scheduled passengers carried, and the busiest international airline by passenger numbers. (Ryanair.com, 2016)

Ryanair is Europe’s favourite airline, carrying over 106m p.a. on more than 1,800 daily flights from 81 bases, connecting 200 destinations in 31 countries. (Ryanair.com, 2016)

Marketing Communications

Marketing Communications - means by which an organization

(Wikipedia, 2016)

The IMC planning process begins with an analysis of the context, which involves the 3 C’s – customers, competitors, and communication. From the analysis of the 3 C’s, decisions about the target market and product positioning can be made. Please see fig. 1 in appendix. Ryanair’s Integrated Marketing Communications:

Ryanair holistically combines both marketing, advertising, technology and public relations practitioners together in an integrated communications framework model (Cornelissen, 2005) drawing upon management strategy, consumer behaviour and organizational theory to manage the company's reputation and maintain brand equity. Integrated communication is created at the corporate brand level for Ryanair with the goal of enhancing its positioning within the market as Europe's ‘lowest price airfares' whilst maintaining its competitive strategy. (Ukessays, 2015)

O'Leary orchestrates Ryanair's communication strategy from the management team down with a hierarchical approach, enabling communication from a corporate strategic level which is reflected within its corporate culture. (Ukessays,

“External communication typically includes email, brochures, newsletters, posters, advertisements and other forms of multimedia marketing designed to attract customers, partners and suppliers to conduct profitable business transactions”. (Duggan, 2016).

“As an entrepreneurial organisation Ryanair believes it possesses the right to play outside the box and follow its own path, challenging the status quo of corporate communication and pushing the aviation industry boundaries. They follow an external communications strategy which more often or not is designed to provoke the audience rather than to attract. It focuses on communicating the same message repeatedly; ‘low fares' through online, print and .... channels in an attempt to reinforce the notion of ‘good value' with consumers”. (Ukessays, 2015)

Up until 2014 Ryanair had relied on its in-house resources to drive publicity. That all changed when they hired Dare, the first ad agency to be hired by Ryanair. “The agency on everyone's lips this week is Dare, the first ad agency to be hired by Ryanair in more than two decades. Until now the airline has relied on its in-house resources to drive publicity.” (McCabe,