How Astronomer Won the Internet Without...

The saying that all publicity is good publicity isn’t always true, and yet there’s a whole slew of professionals out there seeking to make it their cause. 

After all, visibility is a high-stakes game. You can play and you can absolutely lose. And when your CEO is caught in a massive scandal of the extramarital variety and becomes arguably the most viral moment of the year thus far, what do you do? What are your options, when is the right time to act, and what are the inherent risks?

Everyone’s seen the Coldplay kiss cam video by now—seen the proliferation of memes, the offcolor comments, even that image with LinkedIn’s signature “open to work branding” slapped on top. Poignant yes, and also pointed.

And by now, most have also seen the video response where Astronomer’s “temporary spokesperson” Gwyneth Paltrow coolly states, “I’ve been hired on a very temporary basis to speak on behalf of the 300-plus employees at Astronomer,” before playfully referencing a recent surge in the company’s notoriety.

A brilliant move. Seriously, the marketer in me applauds the marketer in whoever pulled that off—because that original kiss cam clip clocked a whole lot of views, sparked commentary across platforms, and turned Astronomer—a B2B data automation company—into an unlikely name on everyone’s For You Page. In less than 24 hours, the company went from being known only in certain circles to being the most talked about business in the world. 

What do you do with that? How do you flip the script from being the laughing stock to laughing alongside. Because the way I see it, the real story isn’t the memes. It’s the company’s strategically executed response.

As a brand, you only have a few options at a time like this. You can either stay silent, let the attention die out, wait for the next viral moment to consume the news cycle, and move on. Or you can capitalize on the attention and shift things toward your own narrative.