In 2021, Michael Corcoran walked into Ryanair as its new Head of Social with an open brief: take the airline’s social media, work out what it could become and build the team to make it happen. What followed turned Ryanair into one of the most recognisable, provocative and relentlessly entertaining brand voices on the internet.

For the first episode of our new season, Michael joins brand-new hosts Mirjam Hunt and Julian Poole to tell us how they did it. Today he runs Slice, a social consultancy built around helping companies develop stronger strategy, teams and capabilities of their own. So we also put the obvious question to him: if you’re a founder or small business without an eight-person social team, how should you approach social media today?

In this episode, you’ll learn:

⚡ why speed became one of Ryanair’s biggest advantages

🎯 how to turn a distinctive brand voice into a repeatable way of working

🔥 how to judge which risks are worth taking

📱 how small teams can make better social content without over-engineering it

🔁 why your best-performing ideas deserve more than one outing

🧠 what matters when building a social media strategy today

Michael gave us far too much good material for one episode, so we’re starting Season 2 with a two-parter. Part 2 lands on October 13, when the conversation moves from building brands to building a business – including the very hard lessons Michael took from the collapse of Frankly.

👉 Listen to Part 1 now and come back next week for the rest of Michael’s story.

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