This editorial appeared in the July 31st, 2025, issue of the Topline newsletter.
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It started with a kiss.
Specifically, a Coldplay concert kiss-cam moment—between Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and the company’s head of HR. The two were there in a personal capacity, but it quickly turned into a public stage. By the next morning, the clip had made its way from fan cams to Slack channels to LinkedIn, splitting opinion faster than a hot take on the Fed.
The company acted fast. Both execs were either dismissed or put on leave. And then came the whiplash: Astronomer launched a campaign with Coldplay front man Chris Martin’s ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow—yes, that Gwyneth—playing off the scandal and redirecting attention to their upcoming product event.
The move polarized the public even further. Some called it a bold, brilliant PR coup. Others slammed it as crass and tone-deaf. But for CMOs watching from the sidelines, the real question isn’t “was it smart?” or “was it tasteful?”
The real question is: what happens when your brand becomes a character in someone else’s story?
We like to think of brands as codebases. Internal logic, structured updates, tightly scoped variables. But brand is more like language—it evolves through use, gets redefined by context, and often gets misused entirely.
I’m sure Astronomer didn’t plan for a viral PDA moment to dominate their narrative. But in a world where the lines between personal and professional are permanently blurred, they didn’t have to.
When you elevate executive visibility—as many brands are now doing via personal brand building strategies on platforms like LinkedIn, X and Substack—you buy top-of-funnel awareness, credibility, and pipeline. You also inherit the full unpredictability of human behavior. Personal brand ≠ corporate brand. Until, suddenly, it does.
Whether Astronomer set out to build the brand or elevate the profile of its CEO is immaterial. What matters most is what happens when the spotlight shifts from the company’s brand, to the exec’s brand.
What stands out in Astronomer’s response isn’t the speed—it’s the tone. They didn’t go into apology mode. They pivoted to levity. They understood the meme mechanics of modern scandal and played to the crowd, not the critics.
This isn’t an endorsement of what Astronomer did. It’s a recognition of a shift.
Crisis communications used to be about control. Today, it’s about interpretation. Brand teams must:
Humor is risky. But so is silence. And so is sincerity, when the audience is already skeptical. There’s no playbook for how to handle situations like these—only fluency, judgment, and a willingness to improvise.
Even the best governance can’t prevent a founder from doing something dumb—or a team member from filming it. What CMOs can do is build muscle memory:
Because make no mistake: the next brand crisis won’t look like the last one. It’ll be stranger, faster, and more public. And the feeling of control you crave—well, that will just be an illusion.
You can’t firewall your brand. You can only architect it to flex. The most enduring brands aren’t the most pristine—they’re the ones that can take a hit and stay coherent.
As the dust from the scandal and the ensuing campaign settles, I think it’s fair to say that Astronomer didn’t break their brand. In my humble opinion, I’d go so far as to say they bent it toward the spotlight. Which also begs the question, why did it take a full blown brand crisis for Astronomer to exercise creative muscle in its marketing?
Will it pay off? Too early to call.
But one thing is certain: the era of brand control is over. Your brand isn’t what you say. It’s what the internet sees—and how you respond when it sees something you didn’t plan.
Strong brands survive scandal by leading from the front foot. Weak ones collapse under the weight of their own silence.