South Africa, Jan. 22 -- It has been a bit like that with the hype about social media and how, if your company didn't have a presence and a "social media team", then you'd sink in the same primordial swamps as the dinosaurs.

One of the biggest failings has been to try to use social media as a customer service platform - and this hasn't worked in many cases and, in some, has actively damaged a brand because of the reach of a platform and/or the inept way the team handled a comment.

Ryanair turns a spat into a spectacle

Yet, this week, a man called Michael O'Leary gave the entire marketing sector a lesson in how to use social media as a proper "force multiplier", turning very little expenditure into huge, valuable media coverage.

O'Lear...