Every crisis is an opportunity to be extraordinary
In a time of brand crisis, the reaction is everything. Do you make vague promises and try to ride out the news cycle, or do you take on the crisis head-on, in a fun, thought-provoking and social way? James Wright, group CEO of Havas ANZ, explores.
It’s the story that still won’t go away, the very awkward kiss cam moment, captured at a Coldplay concert. After a period of considerable global embarrassment, recently we saw the corporate affairs and marketing teams at Astronomer start their “Fix You” response for the brand, drafting in Gwyneth Paltrow to front a satirical business video making light of the situation.
As someone who recently spent over four years working in the US representing many different types of organisations, I was fascinated by the response, but for a different reason than many have written about.
For me from a PR perspective the most interesting thing here is not so much that Astronomer took an unexpected and unusual path, there are many previous examples of this, but that it did so as a B2B brand, a technology company that specialises in data engineering and workflow management. Think about that for a moment. Then add that they are a US company, where B2B brands are traditionally some of the most conservative in the corporate world.
The usual response in the crisis playbook often involves short statements or press releases that don’t say a huge amount with terms such as “we take this issue very seriously…” and “we are unable to make further comment at this time” whilst the situation is being investigated at the forefront. They then ride it out until the news pivots to another more sensational story, fortunately in the US with President Trump and Elon Musk, that’s never far away. And that’s a genuine point.
One high profile, and I think, outstanding example of a consumer brand dealing with a crisis in a fun, thought-provoking and social way is KFC. You might recall when it ran out of chicken across almost all of its UK restaurants, they dealt with this highly embarrassing situation by owning their ‘FCK’ up literally by creating “FCK Buckets”, with humorous social updates in their brand voice and a place on their website to check the status of chicken at your local restaurant. However, this is a fun consumer brand.
Back to this being a B2B brand responding in an unexpected way. Anything unexpected will likely get people talking to some extent, but they went all in by utilising and harnessing social, and an influencer/celebrity. They released their socially-native content in the same places where millions of people were sharing and commenting on the kiss cam incident whether these were news stories, social posts, memes, or recreations on TikTok and Instagram, some of which were ingeniously funny. So, they also used irony, self-deprecation and humour themselves. Again, remember this is an American B2B tech company.
KFC’s FCK bucket
In recent years at Havas we have made the decision to have our PR and creative communications agencies working closer and closer with our public affairs and corporate advisory teams – for this very reason. It was originally done to enable us to more effectively respond to what I see as the increasing shift from “permacrisis” to “polycrisis”. Corporate communicators once had the luxury of keeping their eyes trained on a single crisis at a time, now more than ever they are called on to juggle multiple complex crises simultaneously and expertly.
A lot of crisis experts here in Australia have classified the Astronomer response as brilliant but back in the US it’s been a little more measured. Have they made light of this? Have they addressed the trust issue? Is there a problem with its culture and what are they doing about it?
With any crisis response there will be those that thought it was great and others that are more detractors. My experience is that ultimately time will tell if it worked, with issues and crisis management, the situation is rarely decided in the first phases of the response but in the long-term. You need a strategic follow up plan, with solid committed actions that are delivered consistently.
What I believe to be important is that even as a B2B brand you must also think and strongly consider B2B2C in all situations, even a crisis and this is a new trend. World-renowned life coach and author Martha Beck once said, “any deep crisis is an opportunity to make your life extraordinary in some way”, the same goes for a brand. We will now always have two meanings for Astronomer in our head.
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