Is Astronomer's bravery the beginning of the end for risk averse corporate communicators?

‘Astronomergate’ will come and go, but the questions it raised about creative risk are permanent, says Ready 10 founder David Fraser.

Lots and lots of people in our industry have given their two cents on Astronomer. 

Firstly, we had part one—the Coldplay thing, in the stadium, on the cam…yeah, you know. And then the volume was turned up to eleven when they issued their response with Gwyneth Paltrow jokingly hosting an online Q&A.

When Astronomer did upload that clip, the Hindsightosphere (otherwise know as LinkedIn) fired up again as one, united in lauding its genius, congratulating them on perfect crisis management and analysing what a masterstroke this was from the firm.

Personally, I’ve mixed feelings about it all. It’s hilarious and brilliant and all those things, whilst at the same time there are some real people at the centre of all this that need to be considered. But if you are going to go for it, Astronomer executed it perfectly, and the thing that stood out to me was the sheer ballsyness of it.

History will show this was a well-timed, brilliantly executed, masterclass in crisis management. For me, it’s about the bravest thing I have seen in comms for a long time.

Because can you imagine how many people likely said 'no' to this internally? How many thought it too risky, too opportunistic? How many probably said this would make the situation worse, and it would be a disaster?

There was probably even a super-dramatic person who dropped an "on your head be it" as they stormed out of a room.

Now, there are a lot of “I knows” involved here…

I know that Ryan Reynolds’ marketing company made the Paltrow clip and with them comes a ton of connections, reassurance and confidence.

I know that they were faced with a one-off opportunity where people knew their name, but not much about them and this was a use-it-or-lose-it moment to ride the wave.

And I know Astronomer are privately owned and have the freedom to do this in the way a listed company might not.

But still.

The risk was high.

To get it wrong, to cause more embarrassment, to turn customers off. But this company was the centre of the world for the week, and I’m not having it that a whole bunch of people there didn’t loathe this idea before it launched.

People want to stay employed and it’s easier to achieve that by not launching a video of an A-lister ripping the piss out of the situation where your CEO and your head of HR have had a bit of extra-curricular.

For sure, people said no to this. We know this likely happened because organisations are full of these people. And sometimes we are all those people. I can’t say with confidence that if it had been my decision I wouldn’t have shut it down (but I would never say that on LinkedIn, keep it between us please).

At least one person in that company pushed through the noise and opposition and managed to get people on board. And was proven right, at least from an external comms perspective (there’s no indication yet about how this played out with regards to business performance).

It all reminds me of a line from Howard Aiken the… (Googles)…American Physicist who said, “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If they are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”

To get this done, I am certain that someone in that organisation was fearless and determined in getting this through. I’d like to think that bravery is back.

We all need to be a little more like ‘anonymous Astronomer person’.