Coldplay’s kiss cam incident at Gillette Stadium in nearby Foxborough, Massachusetts, sparked viral intrigue two weeks ago when the camera panned to a couple whose odd reaction raised eyebrows. The man, who had his arms around the woman, ducked off camera while the woman turned away, hiding her face.  

“Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” Coldplay singer Chris Martin quipped over the mic – a comment that added fuel to the social media fire.

Within hours, the individuals were identified as the CEO and the head of HR at the tech firm Astronomer, both of whom were married to other people. From a crisis communication standpoint, Communication and Language Studies Department Chair Chris Morse, Ph.D., says the incident put Astronomer in a tough position.  

“On the one hand, the situation had nothing to do with the company since it was two people appearing to be having an affair in their private lives,” says Morse. “However, because the matter involved the CEO and head of human resources, the situation became Astronomer’s problem; the person leading the company and the person responsible for employee well-being were engaged in something together, and you would assume that a well-functioning company would not have that situation occurring.”  

He adds that given the role that a company’s CEO and head of HR play, an employee of the company might have concerns; not to mention those outside the company who are hearing about Astronomer for the first time. The biggest priority in crisis communication related to public image, says Morse, aims to restore public trust, maintain customers or market shares, prevent stock prices from slipping, and mitigate loss of faith in the company. 

Navigating the blame game 

When a crisis happens, people instinctively look for someone to blame.  

“People's first reaction will always be, ‘Who let us down?’ While technically the company probably isn’t to blame in this case, perceptually the public is going to think the company is, and that muddles how this situation will play out,” Morse says.  

One of the biggest risks, he notes, is a delayed response.  

“The longer a company waits, the more room there is for others to shape the narrative,” Morse says, emphasizing that people tend to latch onto the first story they hear, and subsequent explanations are always compared to the first.  

He notes that even if companies don’t have anything to say at the time, a placeholder statement — saying they’re investigating and will follow up — will likely prompt people to wait for the company’s official response before forming an opinion on the situation.  

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“Unfortunately, given that this incident played out on social media and became ‘meme worthy,’ the company did not have much time to react if they wanted to get ahead of it,” stated Morse. Astronomer responded within 48 hours , issuing a statement that this situation was not representative of what the company stands for and an investigation is underway. Shortly after, they announced an interim CEO, followed by a statement from that individual. “Given that the crisis went viral, Astronomer’s quick response time did a lot to help their situation.” 

“While they weren't explaining how it happened, they made clear they did not approve of this,” Morse says.

The company also acted quickly to quell misinformation circulating online, including a false statement attributed to the former CEO.  

“Temporarily you saw that there was some public backlash to what they thought was an official statement, until they learned that it was false. Astronomer did a good job of stamping it out quickly,” Morse says. 

Taking a gamble 

As the incident evolved into meme territory, Astronomer released a satirical ad featuring Gwyneth Paltrow — Chris Martin’s ex-wife. Announcing that she was the temporary spokesperson for the company, Paltrow said she’d be answering some of the most common questions the company received in the last few days. With questions such as “OMG, what the actual...” and “How is your social media team holding...”, Paltrow deflected the questions by detailing what Astronomer does and promoting the company’s upcoming conference. 

“From a marketing standpoint, the ad was a clever play on the situation since not many people knew about the company and this would hopefully reframe people’s thinking of it,” Morse says. “If you look at it purely from a crisis point, however, it might not be as effective as they think.”

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Using humor in crises is dangerous because it can come off as though the company is making a joke of the issue; the more serious the topic, the more serious the backlash to being perceived as taking it lightly.  

“If I'm an employee, this isn't making me feel better about working at the company. Additionally, there are other people viewing the company negatively for moral or legal reasons and this response does nothing to deal with that,” Morse says. 

Additionally, people who weren't aware of the issue may wonder why Paltrow is Astronomer’s temporary spokesperson — leading to online searches to find out what’s going on. 

“You might be bringing people to your crisis, so the number of people who watch this and say, ‘that's clever,’ could be balanced out by the number of people who watch this and go, ‘I didn't even know this occurred. I can't believe a company would let that happen,’” Morse says. 

Long-term outlook 

Despite the controversy, Morse believes Astronomer has a path forward. 

“They were a largely unknown company prior to this incident and had no prior crisis incidents that I am aware of,” Morse says, adding that the public tends to be a bit more forgiving the first time around.  

He adds that if a year or several years down the road the company experiences another crisis, especially one of a similar nature, it will tend to be viewed as more severe. Research suggests that this is due to the perception that whatever actions that were taken to stop the issue would not have appeared to be effective, as well as the fact the people tend to view repeat offenders in terms of crises more negatively as they see it as a characteristic flaw.

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Overall, Astronomer’s response to the unexpected incident offers a real-time case study in crisis communication.

“Astronomer can probably overcome this incident once they can show that they have the rules in place to run the company the way that people think the company should be run, and incidents like this will not happen again.” Morse says. “This crisis wasn’t the result of them doing something, it wasn’t some product of theirs that was doing damage to the community. It was two people they employed who were doing something in their private time. It’s just unfortunate that, given their positions, it became an issue for the company.”