Astronomer's Response is a Masterclass

Hey y’all — I’ve been inside a crisis at a startup.

It’s hard in so many ways.

Time moves 10x faster than normal.

Everyone’s either mad or overwhelmed or confused or sad or… something.

And, if you’re the founder, they’re all looking to you for what’s next.

There are three keys:

1. Move fast

2. Be authentic given the situation

3. (If appropriate) have fun with it

For the last week, this has likely been the case for Pete DeJoy, co-founder and the new interim of Astronomer.

The company has ben largely quiet in the midst of the viral kiss-cam scandal with the original CEO, Andy Byron.

But tonight, Friday, they finally posted something (see below).

And, man, is it perfect.

Here’s a mini crisis PR masterclass:

Should Profitable Startups Raise Venture?

Ok, here’s the post:

Let’s break down why this is so great.

It’s easy to jump right to the video, but the text above it is perfect as well.

It’s soulless corporate speak, like you’d find in an email auto-reply or hear on a recording while you’re waiting to get through to customer support.

This continues when you start the video with the choice of music, the way the text appears on screen, and just the fact that there is a generic corporate training video style banner at the start of this video in the first place.

Seriously — that’s an insane decision.

Most PR teams would tell you to record the exact opposite of this. If they had the guts to do a video at all, they’d want it confessional-style with the founder(s) sitting in front of the camera and a cold open onto them speaking.

After all, isn’t that “authentic” (which we established is a good thing in these cases) whereas your first impression of this is that it’s so stuffy it’s… well… actually… it’s immediately obvious that it’s a joke… “that’s interesting,” you think to yourself.

It’s not yet clear what the joke is, but it’s so blatantly cringey that it’s clear this will be a bit different than the usual multi-paragraph apology post.

The problem this solves for Astronomer is simple:

Millions of people heard about them for the first time this past week, and those people’s only association with the brand were negative.

“Oh, yeah, they’re that company where the CEO cheated on his wife with the woman from HR, right?”

With both of them having now resigned, though, Astronomer no longer really has much to apologize for.

An apology would’ve seemed perfunctory and inauthentic.

Would you really believe Pete DeJoy’s immense regret for something he didn’t even do, or how about if Astronomer said this isn’t the type of environment they want to cultivate?

Bland, standard, not believable, and forgotten as soon as you hear it.

Astronomer realized their only play here was to try and win those people back while they still had their attention.

In another week from now, the news cycle would have moved on.

And the best way to win them back? Change the conversation. Leave them with a different impression (and make it memorable).

They can’t be accused of ignoring the controversy, since the video explicitly refers to it, but they’re able to evade dealing with it in some sort of pre-packaged PR-y way.

The fact that the “temporary spokesperson” for the company is Gwyneth Paltrow, the ex-wife of Coldplay’s lead singer, only makes it stick in your mind more (and ensures it’ll get picked up by mainstream news outlets).

And the script, where she’s talking about what Astronomer does and their big upcoming event, is the icing on the cake.

They’ll sell more tickets and their business will grow, yes, but that’s minor — it makes the whole thing so absurd that you can’t help but appreciate it (and them as a brand).

The video won’t be seen by 100% of the people who saw the viral clip.

Not even close.

But now at least some of them will remember Astronomer is a brand that’s funny and authentic, too.

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