Unless you were living under a very large rock, it is impossible that you did not know about the ‘Coldplay – Astronomer’ scandal.
But, let me assume you were indeed living under the said large rock and offer a crisp summary: During Coldplay’s July 16 concert at the Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, a kiss camera (jumbotron) captured a couple in an embracing state. Coldplay’s lead singer Chris Martin announced on stage, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy”. A concert attendee’s video of the kiss-cam footage went viral online.
Eventually, people figured that the couple was Andy Byron, CEO of a company called Astronomer (that, as per its LinkedIn page, ’empowers data teams to bring mission-critical analytics, AI, and software to life and is the company behind Astro, the industry-leading DataOps platform powered by Apache Airflow’) and the company’s Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot. They are not married to each other, and Andy is actually married to someone else.
And all hell broke loose.
This was enough for the internet to go on a massive, massive tizzy, partly powered by schadenfreude.
Tons and tons of commentary followed about everything from lack of privacy in public spaces, corporate governance standards, marital fidelity, morality, among others.
Amidst all this, both Andy and Kristin quit the company (or were perhaps asked to), understandably. Pete DeJoy, who helped start Astronomer in 2017, according to his LinkedIn profile, and had been serving as chief product officer since earlier this year, was appointed as the interim CEO while the company said that it would begin a search for a new CEO.
After the scandal, Astronomer had issued three statements.
All three are standard, staid placeholder good-to-do corporate communication practices. They were also shared online on Twitter and LinkedIn with the comments turned off. Again, understandably.
Then, early on Saturday, India time (Friday night in the US) Astronomer shared a fourth response, this time with the comments turned on.
It is a response no one, absolutely no one at all, would have expected from the beleagured copmpany.
This.
And the agency behind this completely unconventional, but incredibly brave move? Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort! I’m not surprised at all 🙂
While this was nearly universally lauded as a smart move, a few voices also spoke about it as ‘Astronomer does not need this kind of attention now and that it needs to restore credibility’. That this was ‘terrible PR and a low-class, below-the-belt move’. That this is ‘not the best choice when confronting a pretty substantial break of trust in corporate leadership and management’s ability to make solid decisions’. To quote a few naysayers.
If I was a conventional communications professional thinking inside the box, I would have said the same thing too. If the CEO had not quit and he had orchestrated this campaign, I’d have said the same thing too.
But I am not, and we are not in a world that needs legacy communications thinking anymore. And the CEO has quit. The company is not the CEO. The company too is an affected party.
And we are in a very different world where the most powerful people get away with abusive name-calling and blatantly lying. That, of course, does not mean companies can get away with such things too since they are held to different standards compared to elected leaders.
But consider why this was the best, smartest move by Astronomer.
Let me start with what a conventional response would look like. The company would talk about sticking to values, about initiating an internal investigation, and say all the right things expected out of it. But hey, the company has already done all that! See the three tweets above again! I’d think that the naysayers would not even have seen the normally expected reactions from the company because they are the kind of messages that would travel.
And yet, attention on the company was still at an all-time high. People who had not even heard of Astronomer and who continue to not know what the company does, have now heard about Astronomer.
But the tone of the knowledge/visibility? These people, in very large numbers at that, who may never do business with Astronomer (given that it is a B2B company), right now think, ‘Astronomer? That company where the CEO and HR head got caught in a scandal in a Coldplay concert? Hahahaha!’.
So, corporate placeholders that say the most expected things as per good corporate governance standards are not going to change their view.
Does the company even need to bother changing the view of the multitudes of people who won’t ever do business with the company at all? Hardly. The company can ignore all of them and focus only on existing clients, potential clients, and investors. If it can convince these three audiences, then its future is safe.
But, there IS a massive, unrelated voyeuristic mob out there that remembers Astronomer only in one way – the severely negative, mocking way.
Think of it this way: there is a humongous crowd at the company’s front lobby. It’s a never-before-seen, once-in-a-lifetime kind of crowd. Everyone is uttering ‘Astronomer’ and making fun of the company (while also pointing to the CEO and the HR head, and Coldplay, of course). They are all just there, milling around. Astronomer is just looking at the size of the crowd in utter disbelief.
That is a reputational crisis for Astronomer. In other words, it is a massive attention on the company but all with negative view of the company. Should the company leave it at that? That is, let this very large group of voyeuristic mob continue to think of it as ‘That Coldplay scandal company’?
Not at all. If there was a way to change that perception, they should do that, while also directly communicating with its core audiences/stakeholders.
But this mob doesn’t care about what the company already has done.
So, if Astronomer said, ‘Hey crowd, we have initiated an internal investigation!’, they would respond, ‘Yeah, right! Who are you trying to fool? You suck!’.
Or, ‘Hey crowd, we have made sure Andy has quit!’, the crowd would respond, ‘Boring! You continue to suck!’.
Astronomer: ‘Hey crowd, we have a new interim CEO. He was a co-founder of the company. We are intent on doing the right thing and will start the search for a new CEO’.
Crowd: ‘Yeah, whatever. You still suck’.
But this crowd is not going to stay on. By next week, they would have lost interest and moved to other hot, trending news. Now, the company’s only objective should be to ensure that even as the crowd leaves, they should perhaps go on a note where they think of Astronomer differently.
The result? Hiring Gwyneth Paltrow, world famous actor and more importantly, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin’s ex-wife, to redirect the questions about what the company would do now towards its services and an upcoming event.
This is a masterstroke in attention management. Usual crisis management actions are boring and reactive. But when the crisis presents a once-in-a-lifetime massive attention that is also all negative, the company also needs to indulge in attention management.
And the best way to do that is to do something where the ones thinking negatively about it (even without knowing anything about the company) become the vehicles to talk about how clever the company is (and inadvertently, what it does, and its upcoming event). All this, while having a good laugh. Why good laugh? Because the company is giving back to the mob in the same currency that led to its reputational crisis in the first place – what started with Chris Martin’s innocuous statement on stage is undone by someone who was once closely associated with him. And she is merely titled, ‘Temporary spokesperson’ like a classic inside joke.
The trouble is that conventional communications professionals may mistake this to be crisis management. It is not. Astronomer’s crisis management statements have already been made. The only thing left is for it to live by its values now. And such living will need to happen over a long period of time that no one, at least not this mob, is interested to witness.
Hence, why not do the equivalent of holding a mega-sized mirror to refocus/redirect all that negative attention in a different color?
To be sure, this is a short-term attention management effort. It need not be confused for long-term trust-building actions at all.
It also requires chutzpah on behalf of the management to approve such a move. It goes against every single crisis management rule book because this is out-of-syllabus in that book 🙂
That leaves us with one more question.
Does this move water down the company’s seriousness, its well-earned trust so far? No, I do not believe so.
The crisis was not the company’s doing. It was by two leaders. Did a few other leaders know about this affair and not do anything about it. Possibly. Did all employees know about this? Of course not.
So, why not give something for the mob to laugh at and marvel at the company? The company can perfectly seriously communicate with core stakeholders—directy, away from social media shenanigans—about every step it is taking to earn their trust again. But that audience is different.
And the audience for this effort is completely different. This audience is not the one that needs to trust the company. They only need to think of the company as, ‘That Coldplay scandal company’ (point A) to ‘That clever company that made Tequila out of its lemons’ (point B).
Mission accomplished.
PS: The ‘Pepper’ in the title refers to one of Gwyneth Paltrow’s most famous screen roles – Pepper Potts, in Marvel’s Iron Man series.