Astronomer—the company at the heart of the Coldplay kiss cam CEO scandal—is turning a corporate crisis into comedy gold.
The software company that came to international prominence after a video of its (married to other people) CEO and head of HR getting cozy at a Coldplay concert went viral is bringing in the big guns to resolve their PR crisis: Queen Goop herself, Gwyneth Paltrow.
Paltrow, who famously “consciously uncoupled” from Coldplay frontman Chris Martin back in 2016, has joined the company as a “temporary spokesperson,” according to a video posted to the company’s social media channels on Friday.
Paltrow opens the video with an explanation for her involvement, saying, ”I’ve been hired on a very temporary basis to speak on behalf of the 300+ employees at Astronomer. Astronomer has gotten a lot of questions over the last few days, and they wanted me to answer the most common ones.”
The first question, ”OMG! What the actual f,” is cut off by Paltrow responding, “Yes, 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 that so many people have a newfound interest in data workflow automation.”
“As for the other questions we’ve received,” Paltrow continues, as one such question, ”How is your social media team holding up?" appears on screen, ”Yes, there is still room available at our Beyond Analytics event in September. We will now be returning to what we do best: delivering game-changing results for our customers.”
CEO Andrew Byron and Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot—the pair caught on Coldplay’s kiss cam—have both since left their positions at Astronomer, and the company’s new CEO took to LinkedIn soon after accepting the position to share what he felt was a silver lining.
“While I would never have wished for it to happen like this, Astronomer is now a household name,” Pete DeJoy wrote, adding, “At Astronomer, we have never shied away from challenges... and each time we’ve emerged stronger.”
The video of Byron and Cabot canoodling at the Coldplay concert at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, took the internet by storm, accumulating millions of views and inspiring endless parodies and memes from countless internet users, celebrities, and brands.
Coldplay have now begun issuing warnings before using the kiss cam at their concerts, with Martin telling attendees at a concert in Wisconsin last weekend, “We’d like to say hello to some of you in the crowd. How we’re gonna do that, is we’re gonna use our cameras and put some of you on the big screen. So please, if you haven’t done your makeup, do your makeup now.”
