July 23, 2025

The Coldplay Concert Scandal That Took Down a CEO

The Coldplay Concert Scandal That Took Down a CEO
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Seventy thousand five hundred twenty-one. 

That’s how many news stories included Andy Byron’s name after one juicy Jumbotron moment at a Coldplay concert. In this episode of The PR Breakdown, dissecting how a viral moment spiraled into a corporate PR disaster that exposed a CEO, an HR chief, and a total breakdown in communication control.

What made this story explode? Not just the video, but the silence that followed a hoax. 

Molly breaks down the viral ingredients:

  • A real-life HR entanglement caught on camera
  • Fake apologies and fake wife statements
  • A tech company scrambling to fact-check a fake statement
  • And a resignation that came too late to stop the damage

It’s a live case study in digital PR failure, and a warning for anyone who thinks “it will pass" is a good crisis response strategy in 2025.

Mentioned in the episode: 

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00:00 - Andy Byron's Viral Coldplay Moment

03:31 - Crisis Management and Delayed Response

06:22 - Inside Connections and Hair Salon Revelations

09:04 - Fake Statements and Corporate Missteps

12:50 - Lessons from a Real-Time PR Disaster

16:09 - The Reaction Cycle and Closing Thoughts

WEBVTT

00:00:00.220 --> 00:00:03.024
70,521.

00:00:03.024 --> 00:00:08.521
That's the number of news articles that included the name Andy Byron in the past week alone.

00:00:08.521 --> 00:00:15.064
And if you're wondering how a tech CEO ended up in a meme with Coldplay no, I'm not even going to say that, of course.

00:00:15.064 --> 00:00:23.768
You know how a CEO ended up in a meme with Coldplay lyrics and a ParityX account named Peter Ennis.

00:00:23.768 --> 00:00:26.634
You are not alone.

00:00:26.634 --> 00:00:31.827
Welcome to the PR Breakdown.

00:00:31.908 --> 00:00:46.110
I'm your host, molly McPherson, and this episode is about that concert, that Kiss Cam video that turned into an internet feeding frenzy, and what happens when a name and a face and silence goes viral.

00:00:46.110 --> 00:00:46.872
I'm still laughing.

00:00:46.872 --> 00:00:52.344
Let's break it down.

00:00:52.344 --> 00:00:53.829
The scene.

00:00:53.829 --> 00:00:58.283
Foxborough, or many of you may know it as Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts.

00:00:58.283 --> 00:01:00.850
It was a Coldplay concert, one that I wish I went to.

00:01:00.850 --> 00:01:16.471
It was a packed house, on the Jumbotron, a man and a woman, the man's arm around a woman.

00:01:16.471 --> 00:01:19.754
I'm laughing because I'm thinking of every meme out there.

00:01:19.754 --> 00:01:20.676
You know what I think?

00:01:20.676 --> 00:01:28.563
My favorite meme of all was the Phillies, the Philly fanatic, the Philly fanatic I don't even know.

00:01:28.563 --> 00:01:30.865
The female fanatic I'm a Red Sox fan, so I don't even know.

00:01:30.865 --> 00:01:32.224
I don't know what her name is.

00:01:32.224 --> 00:01:40.936
They recreated the moment where Andy Byron's arm was around his chief people officer, kristen Cabot.

00:01:40.936 --> 00:01:46.444
Both, as we know, are currently reportedly married to other people.

00:01:46.444 --> 00:01:49.385
We all know that moment right, the moment where they split.

00:01:49.385 --> 00:02:03.995
On a Substack Live that I gave last Friday, one of the things that I focused on and other people were talking about as well, is what happened the moment of recognition that they saw their faces in the jumbotron.

00:02:03.995 --> 00:02:11.188
Cabot immediately felt shame, but Andy Byron he ducked and that says everything about that guy.

00:02:11.188 --> 00:02:12.992
More on that guy in a moment.

00:02:13.759 --> 00:02:16.810
By the next morning I did some quick, sloppy math.

00:02:16.810 --> 00:02:27.671
I was looking at 34 million views on the original TikTok post, but that number 70,521, that's a number I called up.

00:02:27.671 --> 00:03:01.086
Today, thanks to Muckrack, a new supporter to the podcast, I now have a PR platform that gives me all the news stories I need right at my fingertips, and this story had everything Howard Dynamics after all, he was a CEO and he hired her Also HR entanglement, a Coldplay soundtrack and a fake CEO statement with zero public statement from Astronomer, the company that the Knudelers both work for Now.

00:03:01.086 --> 00:03:10.229
Thankfully, this viral crisis was not known as Cold Playgate, though some people were trying to make Fetch happen there, but it really didn't need a name.

00:03:10.229 --> 00:03:20.443
All it needed was the clip and there were plenty of social media threads, reddit theories, instagram memes the whole machine turned on.

00:03:20.443 --> 00:03:25.132
This led to a story blowing up to even bigger proportions.

00:03:25.231 --> 00:03:26.881
The reason why is because no one spoke.

00:03:26.881 --> 00:03:28.846
Byron Cabot they didn't speak.

00:03:28.846 --> 00:03:31.721
It's not expected for them to speak, but they didn't say anything.

00:03:31.721 --> 00:03:34.366
But the company didn't say anything either.

00:03:34.366 --> 00:03:50.881
On a TikTok post from last week, I mentioned that if I were brought in to do crisis management for the company Astronomer, I would advise to not send out a statement right away, even when the story was going viral, because the first statement needed to be to a key stakeholder and that was internal.

00:03:50.881 --> 00:03:56.923
The staff needed to know what was going on, because all the young Gen Z staffers were all over this first.

00:03:57.243 --> 00:04:04.768
There is no doubt in my mind that this went viral, probably on a Slack channel before it got to the board of directors.

00:04:04.768 --> 00:04:07.645
It was up to astronomer leadership, key leadership.

00:04:07.645 --> 00:04:10.733
They're a privately held company backed by private equity.

00:04:10.733 --> 00:04:15.062
There are no shareholders in there, but they did have a board and they needed to make a decision right away.

00:04:15.062 --> 00:04:17.310
They let it go too long.

00:04:17.310 --> 00:04:29.574
Ideally, what you want to do is you want to make that HR decision right away, so you can make that public statement, because the fact that it is a company with investors, it has customers, it has key stakeholders.

00:04:29.574 --> 00:04:33.305
There needs to be a public statement because people want to know what's happening.

00:04:33.586 --> 00:04:38.485
But because it was private and there was no statement yet, I didn't say anything.

00:04:38.485 --> 00:04:51.846
That's the reason why I didn't hop on TikTok or social media to give my two cents, even though I was getting lots of requests, not only from friends and colleagues and people who work in the biz and the media biz, but from a lot of reporters as well.

00:04:51.846 --> 00:05:06.074
I had crazy reach out from the press, most notably late afternoon from a national morning television program, also a national syndicated television program, another morning show outlet.

00:05:06.074 --> 00:05:15.600
They all wanted me to give a comment and I still didn't feel comfortable doing it because there wasn't an official statement yet from Astronomer and I just felt like I was feeding the beast at that point.

00:05:15.600 --> 00:05:20.651
But another reason why I couldn't speak is because I literally could not speak.

00:05:20.891 --> 00:05:22.742
I had a dentist appointment in the early afternoon.

00:05:22.742 --> 00:05:27.591
I had to get Novocaine and because I'm a baby, at the dental office my dentist gave me even more Novocaine.

00:05:27.591 --> 00:05:29.442
So my mouth was drooping a bit.

00:05:29.442 --> 00:05:31.266
Even if I wanted to go on air, I couldn't.

00:05:31.266 --> 00:05:35.021
Even if I wanted to do a long TikTok, I couldn't do that because I couldn't move my mouth.

00:05:35.442 --> 00:05:44.190
But a reason why I get these media outlets, why I couldn't do a press statement as well, is because I had a hair appointment and I said I made this appointment months ago.

00:05:44.190 --> 00:05:45.012
I can't cancel it.

00:05:45.012 --> 00:05:54.939
And I thought, gosh, the Molly McPherson of 10 years ago, 15 years ago, geez, of two years ago, thinking of turning down morning television because I had a hair appointment.

00:05:54.939 --> 00:05:56.704
Now why do I bring up this hair appointment?

00:05:56.704 --> 00:05:58.947
It actually pertains to the story.

00:05:58.947 --> 00:06:07.043
If you listened to my Substack Live last Friday, you heard me explain the story of visiting my hairstylist that night.

00:06:07.043 --> 00:06:14.932
Because when I first walked in I said to Jess hey, just so you know, I canceled the interview on this program because I needed to keep my appointment with you.

00:06:14.932 --> 00:06:16.446
And she's like, really why?

00:06:16.446 --> 00:06:17.209
What was the story?

00:06:17.649 --> 00:06:22.706
Here are the inside baseball stories that happened when I was at the salon.

00:06:22.706 --> 00:06:27.858
First, my stylist tells me, one of the stylists went to Gillette.

00:06:27.858 --> 00:06:36.012
Then because, as a favor to his buddy, another stylist who does all the artist's hair when they appear at Foxborough needed the help.

00:06:36.012 --> 00:06:40.827
The guy from the salon did Chris Martin's hair that night and stayed there and saw the jumbotron.

00:06:40.827 --> 00:06:41.629
I was like what?

00:06:41.629 --> 00:06:48.785
I'm on my Substack in my community in the thread chatting kind of real time with everyone and my Substack boy do they deliver?

00:06:48.785 --> 00:06:53.951
Because everybody just went whoop, they all jumped in so we were having a great conversation.

00:06:53.951 --> 00:06:54.451
It was fun.

00:06:54.651 --> 00:07:01.259
Then my stylist says to me Jess says oh my God, molly, you will not believe this.

00:07:01.259 --> 00:07:07.672
A client wrote her to say they were with one of the two canoodlers.

00:07:07.672 --> 00:07:09.502
I don't want to say because I don't want to give too much there.

00:07:09.502 --> 00:07:12.250
They were just with them like on Monday night.

00:07:12.250 --> 00:07:15.488
So this was Thursday night, so four days earlier they were with that person.

00:07:15.488 --> 00:07:18.750
Of course I have to immediately tell my Substack community what was going on.

00:07:18.750 --> 00:07:19.776
I love that.

00:07:19.776 --> 00:07:24.288
Two people in the community were saying this is such a Boston story.

00:07:24.288 --> 00:07:26.833
And it really is a Boston story.

00:07:26.833 --> 00:07:32.853
I said to the group I swear by the end of the week I'm going to be in the inner circle of that story.

00:07:33.500 --> 00:07:40.966
After my appointment I get in the car, I look on my phone and there is my group text from my girlfriends.

00:07:40.966 --> 00:07:43.910
We're all headed to the vineyard this weekend for our annual vineyard trip.

00:07:43.910 --> 00:07:48.490
One of my friends in the group said is anyone paying attention to the CEO story with Coldplay?

00:07:48.490 --> 00:07:50.360
Molly, you must be paying attention to it.

00:07:50.360 --> 00:07:59.867
Then my friend goes on to say that someone close to her, one of the Knudler's siblings, wedding the weekend before and I went, that's it, that's it.

00:07:59.867 --> 00:08:03.423
I didn't even get home and I'm already in the inner circle.

00:08:03.423 --> 00:08:09.754
My friend shared a lot of interesting details that frankly track.

00:08:09.754 --> 00:08:11.865
So I'm headed to the vineyard this weekend.

00:08:11.865 --> 00:08:13.569
So I'm definitely going to find out more Now.

00:08:13.740 --> 00:08:17.127
Thanks to Angie she's a member of my Substack community.

00:08:17.127 --> 00:08:25.098
She sent a link to Men's Health Magazine, I think it was, with a response to the fake CEO post about Andy Byard.

00:08:25.098 --> 00:08:31.649
Astronomer finally started calling individual media outlets to debunk that post and say it was fake.

00:08:31.649 --> 00:08:35.770
It took them all day to stop the post.

00:08:35.770 --> 00:08:40.312
That was the fatal mistake that was made by Astronomer.

00:08:40.312 --> 00:08:42.467
I fully place the blame on them.

00:08:42.620 --> 00:08:47.486
It's completely understandable that it would take time to decide what they were going to do with the CEO.

00:08:47.486 --> 00:08:49.975
The concert only happened the night before.

00:08:49.975 --> 00:08:53.667
Maybe Andy Byron didn't even come into the office, which I think would be fair.

00:08:53.667 --> 00:08:57.427
They would have to track him down and talk to him and then they had to decide what to do.

00:08:57.427 --> 00:09:08.052
I'm going to give them the benefit of a doubt that there was an internal story and they probably were trying to hammer out an exit deal with Andy Byron.

00:09:08.052 --> 00:09:14.441
That's why it was so easy for me the next day just to make a guess and say, hey, this guy's going to be out by the end of the week.

00:09:14.441 --> 00:09:22.085
That's why Fox News they wrote me over the weekend asking if they could use my TikTok and they wanted a quote from me as well, and I went.

00:09:22.085 --> 00:09:26.592
I don't want to do that, but they did me a solid and they called well, kind of a solid.

00:09:26.592 --> 00:09:35.360
They called me a TikTok.

00:09:35.360 --> 00:09:36.945
Pr expert Molly McPherson accurately calls the fate of the Coldplay CEO.

00:09:36.945 --> 00:09:38.128
So I thank them for that.

00:09:38.128 --> 00:09:39.530
But honestly, we all called it.

00:09:39.571 --> 00:09:41.844
I read part of the astronomer statement on a TikTok.

00:09:41.844 --> 00:09:45.280
I really don't need to read it again because it doesn't matter.

00:09:45.280 --> 00:09:47.028
It's just typical corporate speak.

00:09:47.028 --> 00:09:49.589
There's nothing special about their statement at all, except for two things.

00:09:49.589 --> 00:09:58.659
One, they outed the employee who was supposedly seen in the corporate box with Cabot and Byron.

00:09:58.659 --> 00:10:04.373
That employee was misidentified because everybody's profiles were on LinkedIn and they could grab all that information.

00:10:04.373 --> 00:10:09.710
People immediately associated a girl in the box who kind of looked like an employee there.

00:10:09.710 --> 00:10:13.082
Then this poor girl her name went viral as well.

00:10:13.082 --> 00:10:19.304
But the mistake that Astronomer made is they put her name in the statement, so then they made her go viral all over again.

00:10:19.304 --> 00:10:27.350
Now they were trying to attempt to quell all the speculation about her, but they didn't have to say her name again.

00:10:27.350 --> 00:10:35.645
So I think that was a mistake and this statement, no surprise, came out late on a Friday afternoon and a summer afternoon.

00:10:35.986 --> 00:10:38.936
Let's talk about what was real and what wasn't.

00:10:38.936 --> 00:10:42.583
We stated the long apology attributed to Byron that circulated wildly.

00:10:42.583 --> 00:10:44.386
That was fake and really.

00:10:44.386 --> 00:10:56.696
If you got to the point where the fake Andy Byron quoted Coldplay's Fix you and ended the statement with lights will guide you.

00:10:56.696 --> 00:11:01.125
Also the fake Facebook statement from Byron's wife, megan.

00:11:01.125 --> 00:11:02.307
That was also fake.

00:11:02.307 --> 00:11:08.461
I posted on TikTok I'll include links in the show note and I explained why that post was fake as well.

00:11:08.461 --> 00:11:13.471
It was tied to a spoof account and how we know that it was fake.

00:11:13.471 --> 00:11:14.600
It wasn't her account.

00:11:14.600 --> 00:11:20.418
We all know her profile photo because profile photos on Facebook are public.

00:11:20.599 --> 00:11:25.628
But also the writing was very similar to the fake Andy Byron statement as well.

00:11:25.628 --> 00:11:29.835
It was too lyrical, it was too artificial.

00:11:29.835 --> 00:11:31.682
I would bet anything.

00:11:31.682 --> 00:11:32.705
It was written by AI.

00:11:32.705 --> 00:11:43.442
Both statements had em dashes in it and I had some grammar types come at me in my post saying why are you saying that em dashes are in AI and em dashes don't Like?

00:11:43.442 --> 00:11:44.505
Okay, I get it.

00:11:44.505 --> 00:11:46.549
No one loves an M-dash more than me.

00:11:46.549 --> 00:11:47.852
It's my favorite punctuation.

00:11:47.852 --> 00:11:53.788
But ChatGPT does use M-dashes a lot and I don't write in M-dashes anymore.

00:11:53.788 --> 00:12:01.893
I used to love M-dashes because they're so prevalent in artificial intelligence-assisted language.

00:12:01.893 --> 00:12:05.341
It's also because it was formatted poorly and it didn't come from any verified source.

00:12:05.341 --> 00:12:08.764
It didn't come from the press, it didn't come from a law office or anything like that.

00:12:08.764 --> 00:12:10.845
It just came from like Manhattan.

00:12:11.125 --> 00:12:12.826
But there was a lack of intent.

00:12:12.826 --> 00:12:14.967
There was the lack of why Like?

00:12:14.967 --> 00:12:16.629
Why are we even getting the statement?

00:12:16.629 --> 00:12:22.613
The writing was to hook you, to get into the statement, to share the statement, to engage with the statement.

00:12:22.613 --> 00:12:26.174
They wanted people to share the statement and that's exactly what happened.

00:12:26.455 --> 00:12:28.275
The statements went viral.

00:12:28.275 --> 00:12:30.457
The personal lesson from a reputation point of view.

00:12:30.457 --> 00:12:32.361
I mean look at Megan Byron.

00:12:32.361 --> 00:12:33.904
Her name went viral.

00:12:33.904 --> 00:12:35.408
This is a woman who did nothing.

00:12:35.408 --> 00:12:44.071
She was sitting at home, not at Coldplay, but her Facebook page changed drastically Very quickly.

00:12:44.071 --> 00:12:46.384
We could see her reaction to the crisis in real time.

00:12:46.384 --> 00:12:54.452
First her married name was dropped from Facebook because likely Megan Byron was thinking this was a very personal crisis for people who she knew like on Facebook.

00:12:54.452 --> 00:13:00.777
But then she likely started getting inundated with press calls and then made her Facebook page go dark.

00:13:00.777 --> 00:13:02.863
Of course, that leads to a lot of speculation.

00:13:02.863 --> 00:13:04.105
Was she distancing herself?

00:13:04.105 --> 00:13:05.469
Was she reacting privately?

00:13:05.789 --> 00:13:15.686
Again, it's private, it shouldn't matter and, believe me, journalists were working overtime trying to verify all this information.

00:13:15.686 --> 00:13:23.437
I had some people online in the comments saying this was a media-generated story and they were blaming the press and I replied back no, this was not a media story.

00:13:23.437 --> 00:13:25.403
The media was not perpetuating the story.

00:13:25.403 --> 00:13:28.071
Social media was perpetuating the story.

00:13:28.071 --> 00:13:29.905
Astronomer not commenting.

00:13:29.905 --> 00:13:31.644
That's what fueled the fire.

00:13:31.644 --> 00:13:32.868
It wasn't the press.

00:13:32.868 --> 00:13:33.910
I was speaking to the press.

00:13:33.910 --> 00:13:36.307
They were all trying to verify the statements.

00:13:36.307 --> 00:13:39.149
The first time I saw a verification was from Variety.

00:13:39.149 --> 00:13:40.846
Astronomer did eventually respond.

00:13:40.846 --> 00:13:44.431
They did debunk the hoax, but it took way too long.

00:13:44.431 --> 00:13:46.813
And then, of course, the next day came the resignation.

00:13:46.813 --> 00:13:49.176
I thought for sure they would do it in the morning Again.

00:13:49.176 --> 00:13:49.657
What did they do?

00:13:49.657 --> 00:13:50.981
They waited until Friday afternoon.

00:13:50.981 --> 00:13:59.979
Why wait that long, particularly when we know, based on the interim CEO that they like the press.

00:14:00.504 --> 00:14:08.745
Now, this is a part of the astronomer statement that I did not like, because the statement is one that I felt was a little off kilter.

00:14:08.745 --> 00:14:12.615
It came from the astronomer interim CEO, pete DeJoy.

00:14:12.615 --> 00:14:21.537
He shared the statement on LinkedIn July 21st, so this is two days after Astronomer announced that Andy Byron had resigned.

00:14:21.537 --> 00:14:23.504
You'll have to let me know what you think of this quote.

00:14:23.504 --> 00:14:34.739
The events of the past few days have received a level of media attention that few companies M-dash, let alone startups in our small corner of the data and AI world M-dash ever encounter.

00:14:34.739 --> 00:14:43.534
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.

00:14:43.534 --> 00:14:43.995
End quote.

00:14:43.995 --> 00:14:44.806
I hate that quote.

00:14:44.806 --> 00:14:45.827
I really do.

00:14:45.827 --> 00:14:46.990
It's like he's taking glee.

00:14:46.990 --> 00:14:50.486
It's like he's stepping on the corpse of his predecessor.

00:14:50.486 --> 00:14:51.793
I think it's in bad taste.

00:14:51.793 --> 00:14:59.934
They should have released the one statement about the CEO and that's it Done, not leverage the press.

00:14:59.934 --> 00:15:01.057
It's a bad look.

00:15:01.057 --> 00:15:06.035
So, as of the time of this recording, byron has stepped down and no public statement from Kristen Cabot.

00:15:06.035 --> 00:15:08.309
She's still employed at Astronomer.

00:15:08.711 --> 00:15:13.048
Now let's talk about what all of this actually means, because this wasn't just a gossip headline.

00:15:13.048 --> 00:15:16.094
It was a live case study in Workplace Power Dynamics.

00:15:16.094 --> 00:15:17.596
He was the CEO.

00:15:17.596 --> 00:15:24.316
He did hire her Digital impersonation meme culture oh, my goodness, I said this in the TikTok.

00:15:24.316 --> 00:15:26.249
This was peak meme culture.

00:15:26.889 --> 00:15:30.988
But it was also a case study in the collapse of communication control in real time.

00:15:30.988 --> 00:15:37.748
And we've seen all of this before, but we haven't seen it at this speed Because there was a delay in the response.

00:15:37.748 --> 00:15:40.533
In other words, they weren't acting fast enough behind the scenes.

00:15:40.533 --> 00:15:49.596
It gave room for false narratives to bloom and take root, because they did not say anything to debunk that statement.

00:15:49.596 --> 00:15:59.846
So for communicators and leaders, the lesson is clear If you don't say it, someone else will, and they will say it a lot better than you and they'll probably use a lot of em dashes.

00:16:00.086 --> 00:16:04.057
The only things confirmed in this story are the video, the identities and the resignation.

00:16:04.057 --> 00:16:08.573
Everything else is a mix of speculation, parody and digital debris.

00:16:08.573 --> 00:16:12.495
This is what happens when a story hits the algorithm before it hits the boardroom.

00:16:12.495 --> 00:16:27.389
If you're in a position of leadership or advising someone who is and you think this could never happen to us, you're not paying attention, because we're not just in a news cycle anymore, we're in a reaction cycle.

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My thanks to the supporter of this podcast, muckrack, for giving me the tools to quickly find all the stories about this story.

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That's all for this week on the PR Breakdown.

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Just remember everyone, sometimes the most viral part of a crisis isn't what happened, it's what people think happened.

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Bye for now.