Crisis of Communication (Hunter Field Editor’s Note)

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If I began this column by mentioning Astronomer three weeks ago, you’d have thought I’d mistakenly capitalized the word for a scientist who studies space.

But if you’re someone with an internet connection, you know I’m talking about the tech company whose now-former CEO and top HR official were recently caught a bit too close to one another on a “kiss cam” at a Coldplay concert.

The pair’s awkward attempt to hide from the camera after they were caught in what has been perceived as an extramarital affair has been viewed millions of times and became a leading topic of online discourse for the last few weeks.

The episode has served as fodder for late-night television, dominated newspaper section fronts and spawned a flood of social media memes. But I think the incident’s true legacy is beginning to come into focus. Astronomer’s public response — albeit slow — offers companies a nice playbook for crisis public relations.

Astronomer’s first statement after the incident was the typical PR gobbledygook about company values, the launch of a “formal” investigation and forthcoming additional details.

Then CEO Andy Byron resigned, and after a week of quiet, Astronomer’s communications team came up with a masterstroke of crisis comms: They hired a new temporary spokesperson — Gwyneth Paltrow, the Oscar-winning actress whose ex-husband happens to be the lead singer of Coldplay.

Paltrow, in a video posted on Astronomer’s social media, addresses the sudden interest in the company by answering a series of the most common questions flying at the company in the days following the concert mess.

“OMG! What the actual f,” the first question reads.

“Yes,” Paltrow says, “Astronomer is the best place to run Apache Airflow, unifying the experience of running data, ML and AI pipelines at scale. We’ve been thrilled so many people have a newfound interest in data workflow automation.”

She answered the next question about how the company’s social media team was holding up with a similarly clever pivot to plug an upcoming conference.

It worked on so many levels.

When Astronomer had the attention of the world, it took the opportunity to let everyone know that it was in on the joke and educate all of us on what type of work it does. It transformed a PR nightmare into an ad for the company that has millions of impressions.

This only worked because the crisis at hand didn’t involve a core function of the company.

But we see companies bungle responses to similar episodes constantly.

This is a lesson that it’s OK to let yourself in on the joke and not take yourself too seriously.

Your next publicity crisis might even grow brand affinity.

Email Hunter Field, editor of Arkansas Business, at hfield@abpg.com