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| Juliana Wheeler |
Amid the salacious snickering about the Coldplay Kiss Cam embarrassment is a very serious corporate reputation crisis for Astronomer, a previously low-profile tech company that integrates data into applications, enabling clients to benefit from AI.
Astronomer isn’t a consumer brand, though it works with such household names as Apple, Ford and Uber. It recently raised more than $375 million in venture capital funding from high profile investors including Bain Capital Investors, Insight Partners, Salesforce Ventures and other respected firms.
The company’s key audiences are commercial and financial, not the mass market media or the estimated 50-90 million social media viewers of the video in which Andy Byron, its married CEO, and the company’s divorced CHRO were caught in a public clinch at Gillette Stadium during a Coldplay concert.
Astronomer appears to have adhered to the first rule of crisis communications: prioritize your audiences. The company's response clearly targeted its customers, who likely look carefully at the risk management, judgement and values of their suppliers and investors. Its response was decisive and timely.
Three days after the Coldplay concert, the company appeared ready to move on from the intense global attention. Astronomer issued a statement on social media saying Byron had resigned. The statement reiterated the company’s commitment to its values and culture, said that its leaders are expected to set the standard for conduct and accountability, and noted that “recently, that standard was not met.”
The statement wisely acknowledged the situation, saying “awareness of [the] company may have changed overnight.” The announcement then pivoted to focus on the company's business, as any crisis response should: “We’re continuing to do what we do best: helping our customers with their toughest data and AI problems.”
This followed two previous statements, one which said company leaders “are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability” and clarified false information that was circulating, and another which announced that the company’s co-founder and chief product officer Pete DeJoy was stepping up as interim CEO after Byron was put on leave.
By Sunday, the leadership team section on the company’s homepage was updated to remove Byron; the CHRO was still there. The company might have taken the entire leadership team off the homepage sooner, since most corporate websites are not structured that way. That would have shifted the focus to Astronomer’s business and its accomplishments.
The company should also pay close attention to the internal fall-out. Colleagues are likely to wonder what it takes to get ahead at Astronomer—skills and hard work, or personal relationships?—and what the company’s values are in practice. Employees will be getting calls from clients, prospects, friends, family and the press, asking for details and whether they knew about the relationship.
That’s why an immediate internal announcement was warranted as well, including clear guidance to all colleagues at all levels about how to say—politely and firmly—that they can’t comment, and direct anyone who asks to the corporate statement and the company’s media relations contacts.
There will now be personal issues to manage, too: who knew what, when did they know it, how to get beyond the reputational crisis and back to work, while ensuring the executives and their families, who have been embarrassed publicly and globally, have support. These are likely on the board’s shortlist of issues to address.
The press coverage may continue, but public attention will wane. Some commentators said the company moved too slowly following the global deluge of press and social media attention, leaving room for spoof responses. But getting a crisis response right is more important than moving quickly and potentially getting it wrong.
Astronomer’s reputation will recover, mostly because its communications team got it right.
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Juliana Wheeler is a senior communications consultant, founder of Juliana Wheeler Consulting and a Senior Advisor with CLP Strategies.
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