- Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort production company was involved with the latest Astronomer video featuring Gwyneth Paltrow. The ad is being hailed as a master class in crisis PR. It comes days after the former CEO and former head of HR were seen embracing at a Coldplay concert.
Astronomer might have gotten the last laugh following the viral moment that caught its former CEO and former head of HR in an embrace at a Coldplay concert. And it has, in some ways, Ryan Reynolds to thank for that.
Late Friday, Astronomer released a video featuring Gwyneth Paltrow (who was formerly married to Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin), who was hired as a spokesperson on a “very temporary basis.” In the humorous clip, Paltrow answers questions such as “OMG, what the actual f” and “How is your social media team holding…” by promoting the company’s services and upcoming analytics event.
If the tongue-in-cheek approach—from the phrasing of the questions to Paltrow’s blithely chipper answers—seems to have a Ryan Reynolds tinge to it, that’s because the ads were created by Reynolds’ Maximum Effort production company.
The company confirmed its participation in the ads on Sunday in a post on social media, writing, “Thank you for your interest in Maximum Effort, @astronomerio! We’ll now get back to what we do best: motion pictures with Hugh Jackman, Fastvertising and Wrexham football,” the post said. “We’ll leave data workflow automation to Gwyneth Pa Astronomer.”
Pete DeJoy, Astronomer’s cofounder, who stepped in as CEO after Andy Byron’s resignation following the kiss cam incident, thanked Maximum Effort in a LinkedIn post Sunday.
“I’d also like to thank the team at Maximum Effort for their remarkable work with our very temporary spokesperson,” DeJoy said. “As Gwyneth Paltrow said, now it’s time for us to return to what we do best: delivering game-changing results for our customers. We look forward to what this next chapter holds for Astronomer.”
Maximum Effort, founded in 2018, has made a name for itself with its irreverent video spots, some of which are ads, some of which are simply meant to amuse. It also coproduced the films Free Guy and Deadpool & Wolverine.
The Paltrow video has been viewed more than 36 million times on X/Twitter alone, with more than 150,000 likes. It has another 534,000 views on YouTube to date.