The "Big Idiot' takes on the "insufferable chimp" - what Marketing can learn from Elon Musk's hissy fit over being rejected by Ryanair's Michael O'Leary

Fox hunting was once pitched by Oscar Wilde as “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the inedible”.

For some reason, that quote sprung to mind this week as the spat between Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary and the biggest of the US tech bros, Elon Musk, exploded into the ‘Big Idiot Sale’, an offer from the airline only open to “Elon Musk and any other idiots”.

So, we’re talking a sophisticated intellectual debate between two leading business men, setting a splendid example of how to conduct themselves as heads of public companies, yes? 

No, of course we’re not - we’re talking an outpouring of bruised ego on the one hand and opportunistic stirring of the proverbial on the other! Who comes out best? Well, we’ll come back to that later - and what lessons others might learn here.

But for now, a recap. New readers start here!

Fuel drag

The name-calling started from the US side when the Irish businessman in charge of the low-cost air carrier said that he wouldn’t be using Musk’s Starlink satellite offering to provide in-flight wifi. He backed up this decision by arguing that the tech required additional kit to be added to planes, adding to weight and increasing fuel drag by as much as $250 million a year across the Ryanair fleet.

Now, anyone who’s ever travelled on Ryanair - I am so, so sorry! - will know that it specialises in passing on additional costs to passengers on top of their cheap-as-chips tickets, including floating ideas such as fitting plane toilet doors with coin-slots so that passengers would have to pay to use them. When this turned out not to be goer - EU regulations wouldn’t allow it! - O’Leary suggested he might remove two of the three toilets on board his planes in order to squeeze in more seats! Mind you, he’s also suggested the idea of standing room only cabins, so...

But the main point is, if anyone’s going to be taking more money off of Ryanair customers, it’s going to be Ryanair, and that money is going on the bottom line, not being handed over to Elon Musk!

On the other hand, Musk is not someone who’s used to hearing the words ‘No you can’t’ and responding well to it. The Ryanair rejection of Starlink was no exception to that, particularly when O’Leary poured fuel on the flames by calling X “a cesspit” and advising people:

I would pay no attention whatsoever to Elon Musk. He’s an idiot – very wealthy, but he’s still an idiot.

Musk, of course, is rich beyond O’Leary’s wildest ambitions and as such he can afford to rise above such petty insults....which, of course, he chose not to do, denouncing the Ryanair boss as “an utter idiot and insufferable chimp” and threatening to mount a takeover bid for the airline just to install Starlink kit across the fleet.

O’Leary wasn’t about to miss out on the global platform that all this drivel was opening up for him, with the Ryanair Marketing people earning their keep by announcing the ‘Big Idiot Sale’, with 100,000 seats opening up for £16.99. This in turn, according to O’Leary, saw a significant uptick in bookings and website traffic.

That’ll show him, Elon, eh?

PR wins

Now, it’s easy enough to joke about this, but the last time Musk was goaded like this he ended up buying Twitter just to prove a point!

That said, O’Leary is not having any sleepless nights - in fact, he’s quick to argue:

We had a bumper week of free PR last week. I dispute, by the way, an awful lot of articles written over the weekend that Ryanair won hands down. I think we both got a significant win out of it. Musk and X got lots of free cheap publicity by calling me, I think it was a deranged I don't know, a retarded t***! We certainly got a lots of free publicity and a seat sale and a big bump in website visits. The press conference last week was covered. There was 1,500 news articles covered across, I think, 59 different nations, many of whom had never heard of Ryanair before, but certainly have now, even if it's only ‘Ryanair, the airline run by a retarded t***’. It was good for PR.

He adds that he has no objection to introducing WiFi on board Ryanair flights, just not yet:

I think in five years' time, as the technology continuously improves, I think most airlines will be fitting a WiFi access on board short-haul aircraft. We will certainly do so in a heartbeat when we don't have to put an aerial outside the fuselage of the aircraft that has a fuel penalty or a fuel drag. I think the technology will improve in the next number of years [so] that you'll be able to put the aerial or the antenna, I don't know, in the front or the back hole or in the baggage hold or something. Anything that doesn't involve you drilling holes in an aircraft fuselage and putting one of two  aerials on it that has a fuel drag penalty.

He’s also not sold on the idea that lack of WiFi is any kind of deal breaker at present for customers:

We're talking to Starlink, Amazon and also to Vodafone, they all believe that 50% or 60% of passengers will pay for it. We think the number is closer to between five percent and 10% of passengers. Therefore, it will simply add to costs without adding to revenues. I have no doubt in my mind that a low fare will beat a free WiFi on board every single time. But I think as the WiFi technology improves over the next four or five years, we'll all be offering free WiFi access. Customers will use it if it's free, but if they have to pay for it, they won't use it.

And if they won’t pay for it and Ryanair can’t make any money out of it, it ain’t happening any time soon.

Oh - and one last parting shot in the direction of Musk, who’s gone worryingly quiet on the subject over the past few days:

We can argue over what the fuel drag penalty, although interestingly, Mr. Musk's Grok AI facility says that we're right and he's wrong.

My take

Actually I think O’Leary is being uncharacteristically modest here - until/unless Musk breaks open his piggy bank and decides to embark on a takeover here just to spite his rival - Larry David's invention of 'the spite store in Curb Your Enthusiasm springs to mind suddenly - then Ryanair definitely got the better end of this transatlantic ‘full nappy’ tantrum.

But before other CEOs decide this is a good way to get lots of free publicity, a note of strong caution - you need to know how to do this stuff in your DNA; it’s not something to just copy when others do it.

When I was a boy journalist, the ‘Big Bad’ in enterprise tech was Oracle CEO Larry Ellison whose ability to talk down the competition was legend. ‘How does he do it?’, wondered would-be pretenders to the database throne - Hi Informix! Still miss ya, Ingres! It was too short a summer, Sybase! - followed by,  ‘And how can we do it too?’.

The conclusion they all reached was that this Marketing stuff was just all about being rude about your rivals. We can do that, they all concluded - and they couldn’t. What was amusing and charming and ‘It’s just Larry’ about Ellison’s spiel was shrill and snide and not remotely funny when it came from his enemies. Ellison’s Art of War was a far more sophisticated game than his would-be avatars could ever play. A few learned at the feet of the master, but overall, most got it very badly wrong and paid the price.

It’s the same with O’Leary and his schtick. Saying outrageous things is all part of the business model, but there are underlying serious messages that rise to the surface - a lot of commentary from him this week about EU over-regulation and sustainability would have added to the debates at Davos and not seemed out of place, other than being a lot more earthily articulated than a lot of sessions were.

And my only conclusion here - Musk may have the money, but he’s not playing on the same chess board. And while I’d rather stick rusty needles into my eyeballs than willingly set foot on a Ryanair flight, I’m giving O’Leary the credit for a win here.

Marketing’s fun, isn’t it?