Cookie collabs 🍪, Coldplay and the cost of going viral: All the latest brand news

Weekly Exhale

It’s hard not to laugh. Watching a 51-year-old man slide out of frame on a jumbotron at a Coldplay concert. Andy Byron—chin tucked, arms pinned—freezes, turns, and then...crouches down. Like a guilty toddler behind a sofa. If I can’t see them, maybe they can’t see me.

Except we can. The screen is 80 feet wide. Sixty thousand people in the stadium. And by breakfast, 120 million more will have seen it on their phones. A crash-course in Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, a backstage moment thrown into the floodlights. Pure, reflexive, human awkwardness.

Turns out Andy’s not a nobody. He’s the CEO of Astronomer, a data automation company fresh off a $93 million Series D, backed by Bain Capital and Salesforce, valued at $1.2 billion.

And thanks to Andy, Astronomer will go from invisible to a global brand in a single day—the kind of awareness that usually takes a century and hundreds of millions to build. Not bad returns.

Both married, we now know Andy was swaying with Astronomer’s Head of HR, Kristin Cabot, the first to fold, face buried in hands before the camera panned away. A third colleague enters frame, frozen in the expression of the 😬 emoji. Gritted smile, eyes locked forward, trying desperately to disappear without moving.

“Either they’re having an affair or just very shy,” Chris Martin offers. A perfectly British, perfectly polite quip.

And with that, he pours blood into the piranha tank. Social media bares its teeth. And does what it does best: devour.

The truth didn’t stand a chance.

Coldplay’s kiss-cam became our first big taste of AI-fakery at scale. Alternate endings appeared within hours. Deepfaked clips where Andy and Kristin just waved, or kissed, like nothing was wrong. A video apology from Andy that never happened. A GPT-written statement from his wife—also fake. Even footage claiming to be from his daughter. Not real.

And if it wasn’t AI making fakes, people were. Alyssa Stoddard, from Astronomer’s HR team, was caught in the blast radius, wrongly identified as the 😬 onlooker.

“I was not at the Coldplay concert. I am not the brunette in the circulating videos,” she pleaded on LinkedIn.

Didn’t matter. The videos had already racked up millions of views. The internet had chosen its cast, and Alyssa was in it whether she liked it or not.

And then somehow, and I mean out of nowhere, Ryan Reynolds’ ad team spawns in. And faster than Don Draper can say “Change the conversation,” Gwyneth Paltrow (yes, that Gwyneth, Chris Martin’s ex-wife—wink) delivers what the internet didn’t know it needed: permission to laugh.

Deadpan. Perfectly paced. Oddly soothing.

In sixty seconds, a corporate crisis turned into a brand campaign.

And it didn’t come out of nowhere. Astronomer was already on a tear.

It cornered its niche early: Apache Airflow, the open-source data workflow tool originally built by Airbnb. Revenue climbed to $39.5 million this year, and the product’s sticky. Astronomer boasts a 130% net retention rate; customers don’t just stay, they spend more.

An investor’s dream—and now the only data infrastructure company your mom has heard of.

“The spotlight has been unusual and surreal for our team and, while I would never have wished for it to happen like this, Astronomer is now a household name.” Co-Founder, and now interim CEO, Pete DeJoy said.

Astronomer’s first—and probably last—stab at brand fame is a masterclass in understanding the internet: cultural appropriation x speed = engagement. And it almost makes up for the fact that, this time, the data nerds hired a duff CEO.

Because that’s the part that will still trouble the likes of Bain Capital. Not the ad, not the headlines, but how Byron got hired, and how long his pen was in the company ink for. Governance, not Gwyneth, will be the real story in the boardroom. Sure, they fixed it. This time. At a cost—almost certainly carved from that fresh Series D raise.

And what about next time?

“There won’t be a next time”, I can hear Pete DeJoy saying to investors.

Let’s hope he’s right. The brand impact is huge. But it’s not the kind they can cash in. No one impulse buys a data pipeline like they do a pack of Oreos. Like any good crisis playbook, once the moment’s been owned, however uniquely, the smartest move...is to move on.

As Paltrow herself put it: It’s time for Astronomer to get back to delivering results.

Sadly for me, parenthood came with the heartbreak that my son was never going to love the things I do. One of nature’s cruellest tricks. Variation ensures survival, but it also means I’m stuck enduring the things he likes (often awful), while he flat out refuses to engage with mine.

Most days are spent trying to find something—anything—we can do together. Then arguing about it.

One thing we both agree on? We can’t stand Chris Martin. His over-sincerity in the face of such success makes him weirdly punchable. He’s the hummus of popular music.

But that all changed last Summer.

A dear friend invited me and my son to Glastonbury. He was going with his daughter and asked if we wanted to come along. Not the sleep-in-a-mud-trench kind of Glastonbury. The lucky kind.

We wandered through the festival in awe. As night fell, my son wanted to stay up to see the Pyramid Stage. But Coldplay was headlining. I was ready to call it a night.

In a gift you could never plan, my wiser friend nudged us on. He helped us weave our way to the front. Packed tight, shoulder to shoulder, my son even befriended a guy beside us who let him have his giant “Save The Soil” flag. Some mums in front—out for the night, a few drinks in—took a shine to us. Jealous, maybe, that I had my son with me. It felt like a gang. One of those fleeting, magical little tribes you only find in moments like this.

The countdown began. Ten, nine, eight...

My kid, all five foot something of him, wanted up on my shoulders. I lifted him. And there he was. Waving a protest flag high above the crowd at the world-famous Glastonbury. Looking out over a sea of people that stretched for miles. Lights blazing. Anthem after anthem pouring from speakers the size of buildings.

Every time I set him down to catch my breath, he’d pause, wait a beat, then shout: “Up, Daddy. Up again.”

It was magic.

A couple of hours that write themselves into a father-son story. The kind that anchor you through a million ordinary days when you just can’t see eye to eye. The kind that remind you—whatever else unfolds—you’ve been blessed.

Which is, I suppose, what’s unsettled me most.

Because for Andy Byron’s kids—and Kristin Cabot’s too—that same Coldplay concert will mean something else entirely. A rupture in the story they thought they were living. Not an anchor but a millstone. The kind no multimillion-dollar payoff can vanish away. And unlike the rest of us, they don’t get to forget it by Monday.

And yet, there I was. Clapping for the clever ad.

Because as it turns out, the only thing worse than shame is the algorithm’s ability to amplify it. Social media isn’t community. It’s a choreographed feeding frenzy. And if being great at getting eyeballs means a little cruelty along the way—well, congratulations. You’ve mastered the game.

In the scramble to win the internet, we lose touch with our better instincts. So I can’t help but wonder—maybe not tomorrow, but soon—whether we’ll look back at this moment and feel differently.

People break up. Families figure it out. It happens.

But try doing it when you heard about it on TikTok first. When the world's been watching, clicking and stitching your pain into content. When your life is coming apart, and the person delivering your Dad's damage control is Gwyneth Paltrow, who gave herself the perfect divorce. As we laugh all the way to the bank, it might just cost the people who had nothing to do with it...everything.

In the end, I think we’ll ask a simpler question. Not about the strategy. Or the stunt. Or the speed. Or the spin.

Just: Was that really the best we could do?

Let's rise together with every issue. ♡

Market Moves

US economy endures tumultuous week of market swings | Wall Street Journal

Bank of England to cut rates amid rising unemployment and Trump tariffs | The Guardian

Business chiefs gloomy on the economy | Financial Times

Brand Beat

Astronomer’s cheating scandal is still relentless | Yahoo!

Why we believe Gwyneth Paltrow | New York Times

How Sydney Sweeney has saved advertising as we know it | The Spectator

Why brands think being hot and white is ‘great genes’ | The Guardian

ASA bans suggest advertisers pushing toxic size 0 again | The Drum

Coinbase’s ‘Everything is fine’ ad mocks UK economic woes | Ad Age

Vogue’s AI-generated ad sparks debate beyond fashion circles | TechCrunch

Samuel L Jackson promotes ‘motherfuckin’ wind farms’ | The Drum

Kendrick Lamar launches creative agency | Business of Fashion

Airbnb partners with Lollapalooza for music collaboration | Bloomberg

Why the Lipotle lip stain works for Chipotle | Marketing Brew

How Roblox’s brand strategy taps Gen Z creativity at scale | Koobrik Labs

Reese’s and Oreo team up for cup cookie combo | Wall Street Journal

Creator marketing risks flattening brands, says Channel 4 CMO | Marketing Week

Spotify CEO says he's unhappy with its ad business | Mediacat

China’s Luckin Coffee takes on Starbucks coffee chain | Wall Street Journal

Miracle Grow leans on “Full Bush” innuendo in new campaign | Marketing Dive

ITV launches cost-cutting drive after half-year profits tumble 44% | The Guardian

Protein bar brand David launches frozen cod fillets | Wall Street Journal

Virgin Group outs the CMO for a Chief Experience Officer instead | Marketing Week

Search spend dips: where are those dollars headed? | Mediacat

Starting Up

Ty Honey on the female founder comeback | Fast Company

Win-Win secures £3m to expand cocoa-free chocolate across Europe | Tech Funding

9 fashion tech startups investors are watching | Vogue Business

Palo Alto Networks nears $20B acquisition of Israel’s CyberArk | Wall Street Journal

Accelerators holding UK startups back, new report says | Startups

Tech Tidbits

Why over-50s prefer YouTube over the BBC | The Guardian

Trump lays out comprehensive US action plan for AI | US Government

Meta offers $250 million to hire 24-year-old AI prodigy | New York Post

Boardrooms grapple with AI but must embrace it now | The Times

Inside Epstein’s forgotten AI summit | Wired

Venture Vibes

Deeptech VC Michael Jackson says LinkedIn bans him twice yearly | Sifted

Kleiner Perkins enjoys a very successful week | TechCrunch

Who is Wesley Lepatner, the Blackstone executive shot in NYC? | Wall Street Journal

Figma shares surge 250% in its Wall Street debut | Financial Times

And why it's a $2.8bn ripoff for original investors | Austin Hankwitz

How the consumer sector quietly beat a falling market | Springside Ventures

Brunch with Balderton’s Rana Yared: an insider conversation | Sifted

Design Driven

Advertising’s new obsession: Generation Alpha | It’s Nice That

Fast Company reveals best-dressed business leaders | Fast Company

Inside teen bedrooms before the selfie era | The New Yorker

Happiness

The soundtrack of the women’s Euros was happiness | The Guardian

Anxiety gives you a superpower. Unlock it. | Big Think

A happiness calendar for August | Greater Good

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