We need to talk about Coldplay (and that viral Jumbotron moment)

Update: Reports are now breaking that Andy Byron has resigned from his role at Astronomer. What can we learn from the way the company handled this media mess?

It was the jump seen ’round the world.

On the off chance you spent the last day or two camping out of cell range on top of some mountain this lovely July, perhaps you are one of the select few who hasn’t yet watched at least one infamous replay clip of the Coldplay concert in which band member Chris Martin accidentally drew attention to what is rapidly shaping up to be a high-profile (alleged) cheating scandal between a corporate executive and his head of HR. In Martin’s defense, the whole thing played out on the Jumbotron “kiss cam.”

Hilariously short and terribly uninspiring story shorter, the show’s kiss camera spotlighted two people who will definitely not be winning the Academy Award anytime soon. As soon as they realized they were on screen, the awkward leaping and face coverage began. The internet, of course, did what it does best: hashtagging biting memery and hunting down their identities. The couple involved have been publicly named by multiple sources as one Andy Byron, CEO of Astronomer (it’s OK if you’ve never heard enough about it to care before either), and Kristin Cabot, his chief people officer (which is irritating corporate titlese for “HR rep who gets paid more than I do”). If the internet is to be trusted (always an iffy proposition), both parties are apparently married, and, you guessed it, not to each other, a fabulously compromising situation Martin instantly yet innocently sussed out on stage.

It’s hardly unusual for concert promoters to take crowd shots and recordings, so why anyone thought they could bank on anonymity in such a setting is anybody’s guess. To top off the embarrassment cake, the not-so-happy pair and their employer both failed to get ahead of the story, enabling a now-suspended X user with the not-at-all-suspicious handle of Peter Enis to craft his own wicked bit of satire in the form of a press release, purportedly written by Byron. The piece has been hotly disavowed, but not before it took social media by storm.

The aftermath thus far has been relatively predictable: the dry company statement and news reporting hinting at a possible golden parachute for him and declaring suspensions for both, the open-ended questions about who else knew what was going on at work, the public calls to fire both officers as a violation of business ethics or to ignore it all as a matter of personal privacy, the schadenfreude, the sentiments of sympathy for injured spouses that 99.99% of the commenters have no connection to offline. What’s more or less missing from most of those discussions is why that fake press release gained so much traction so quickly, and what it might suggest about our collective feelings toward self-important tech corporations and the people who run them.

Of course, beyond the affected parties and their immediate circles, that hoax statement was hysterically sly, but I don’t think that’s the full reason it went viral. Between the lines oozed pure entitlement, an insistence on sexual privacy within highly public spaces, a shifting of blame to the band, and the usual “I made a mistake and will reflect” mouth gravel that always comes out when an incident like this gets enough mass attention. In sum, it read very much like dozens of genuinely awful “I’m sorry you busted me” statements we’ve all seen before. It’s a masterpiece of classical DARVO strategy: deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. As a bit of wry satire masquerading as an offended wealthy man with power, it’s brilliant.

As a debunked media release, it’s also a stellar opportunity to point out what not to do in the immediate hours of a breaking scandal, because it obviously wasn’t written by anybody from crisis PR.

Since I’m not inside the castle, so to speak, I won’t pretend to know everything Astronomer’s people and consultants did. We can make a couple of working observations, though.

They lost control of the narrative. Sometimes nothing is the right thing to say, but in this case, it backfired spectacularly, with too little commentary trickling in much too late. The world wide web is now absolutely littered with scathing memes and quotes that the principal players claim they didn’t say, and those receipts aren’t going away anytime soon.

In a crisis, you want to get clear on your messaging and get everyone on board, quickly.

They acted too slowly. Speed is a factor in modern media. The beast must be fed, and if there’s nothing fresh to feed it, you make more room for open speculation and third-party commentary. Be accurate and firm, but respond promptly.

For optimum effectiveness, media outreach should have begun within hours. Astronomer can hustle to catch up, but it will be more difficult now.

They forgot to emphasize net positives. Two full days after the concert mess hit the fan, and we still have heard very little from Astronomer other than some rapid-fire rumor slamming and a confirmation that an investigation will launch. They might as well be playing whack-a-mole.

The story dominating headlines right now is, yes, about two corporate executives whose livelihoods, personal lives, and professional reputations are now under the gun. That’s real, and it’s significant. Meanwhile, a secondary storyline lies within the company itself: the hundreds of hardworking employees who are not presently mired in a scandal of epic proportions. There’s ample space to draw attention to the productive work they do (and draw it away from all the drama). At a moment when everybody is frantically googling who the heck Astronomer is, that’s a ball the company needs to keep in the air.

When dealing with a company leadership meltdown, surviving the inevitable media onslaught requires prioritizing an organized, purposeful, and proactive public response from the remaining executive team and their representatives. Whatever ultimately happens to its employees from the Coldplay incident, Astronomer now faces the unenviable task of rebuilding its management reputation while everyone else watches.