Last week, social media went bonkers when Chris Martin accidentally exposed a cheating scandal involving the CEO of the company Astronomer. Andy Byron was caught on a kiss cam at a Coldplay concert with Kristin Cabot, who was not only NOT his wife, but also the chief of HR for the company. Talk about your public relations and internal corporate ethics nightmares! The internet has had a field day with all of this, and Astronomer has made it a point to review the situation in a seemingly responsible manner. And they also hired Chris Martin’s ex, Gwyneth Paltrow to be their temporary spokesperson.
This might be the most brilliant thing that a marketing team has ever done. Instead of letting everyone else run wild with jokes, merchandise, and memes, the DataOps team decided to lean into the joke, HARD. Martin and Paltrow made headlines when they had a “conscious uncoupling,” as Paltrow herself put it.
In a tweet that simply reads, “Thank you for your interest in Astronomer,” Gwyneth Paltrow introduces herself, and informs us she’s been hired on a “very temporary basis” to help answer some important questions the company has received recently. A question then starts displaying on screen that reads, “OMG what the actual f” before cutting off. Paltrow then reappears to answer, “Yes, Astronomer is the best place to run Apache Airflow.” She then continues to tout the benefits of the company and the products and services they offer. She does the same when the next question is asked about how the social media team is holding up.
It is one minute of pure genius, and as of the time of this writing the video has over 21 million views on the page’s official X (formerly Twitter) account. How many people even knew that Astronomer was a company let alone what they did before all this happened? And if the company is seriously investigating their internal policies and culture, then this is the perfect way to acknowledge the madness of the situation in a way that shows what the company is and that it can have a sense of humor about itself. Very, VERY well played.
