Gwyneth Paltrow & The Kiss Cam
We understand it was Ryan Reynolds (husband of Blake Lively, and ex-husband of Scarlett Johansson — so he knows smart women) who cast Gwyneth Paltrow, with her five million Instagram followers, to shoot a PSA for Astronomer.io. Astronomer had a mere 3,294 Instagram followers when it needed instant crisis management.
Astronomer.io? Yeah, that’s the company whose CEO, Andy Byron, and whose CPO (Chief People Officer), Kristin Cabot, were shown embracing on the Kiss Cam at a Coldplay concert. When Byron – expression of deer-caught-in-headlights — ducked, and a shocked Cabot turned her back, Chris Martin of Coldplay said that they must be having an affair or might be “awfully shy.”
Andy Byron, CEO of Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, CPO, caught on camera.
Uh, the first one. In rapid succession there were headlines. Jokes. Their jobs were gone. Lawyers were hired, papers filed. And before that was over ….
Astronomer (it has something to do with organizing work flow – maybe something DOGE should have used), now headed by Peter de Joy. got busy. They hired Reynolds’ ad agency, MAXIMUM EFFORT, which hired Paltrow, who used to be married to Chris Martin. It was a Jedi-master, mind-twist idea.
It parodies what Mobil after an oil spill, Boeing after a plane crash, might do. They would send out a bland “face,” blonde if possible. Think Karoline Leavitt. That person’s job would be to soothe reporters, ignore their questions and offer up sound bites with the company’s messages.
Paltrow is a wonderful actress, although her voice can be a little quacky at times. The setting they provided (seen on Astronomer’s website, not on instagram) is perfectly corporate and bland. She is somewhat dressed down, as would be appropriate for a company in crisis.
Paltrow says she has been hired “on a very temporary basis to speak on behalf of the 300-plus employees at Astronomer.”
Paltrow says that there must be many questions. (The sound of typing, and a black screen begins to fill with these words.) As the letter “F” appears:
The camera swings back to Paltrow, who responds, smoothly, “Yes, Astronomer is the best place to run Apache Airflow, unifying the experience of running data ML and AI pipelines at scale.”
If you can memorize and repeat lines of Shakespeare, you can handle “data ML and AI pipelines at scale.”
A helpful graphic, compliments of Astronomer…
Paltrow drily adds that she and Astronomer are thrilled that “so many people have a newfound interest in data-workflow automation.”
There is another typed question, asking how Astronomer’s social media team is handling all of the questions. She cuts that off with, “Yes, there is still room available at our Beyond Analytics event in September.”
Paltrow adds, “We will now be returning to what we do best — delivering game-changing results for our customers. Thank you for your interest in Astronomer.”
SQUARING THE CIRCLE Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow “consciously uncoupled” ten years ago: Martin inadvertently outed the head of Astronomer on a Jumbotron as an adulterer; the new management of Astronomer then hired Paltrow to make a tongue-in-cheek “crisis management” ad about the scandal.
The “commercial” ends, clocking in at exactly one minute. Of course, no television ad runs a full minute. Too expensive. And no word on what Paltrow was paid for the roughly 90 words she spoke.
Online time is free, however. Look at the fast-moving timeline: The Cold Play Jumbotron event, July 19. This masterwork, released on Astronomer’s Instagram on Friday, July 25, with perhaps a few nudges to savvy media types, exploded on Saturday, July 26.
Let’s admit it. Old-fashioned advertising agencies would take a month to produce something this sharp.
Comments on Instagram said it all: “10/10.” Or as one put it, “Crisis management Hall of Fame.”
If only she could do a mike drop.
— Linda Lee
