The story behind the viral ad that helped Scott Colom win in Mississippi
The 30-second digital ad for Democratic Scott Colom — “Pick Another Protein” — ricocheted across the state, the country, and the internet. At last count, it had 3.7 million views on TikTok.
Ryan Sayles filmed the ad in a few hours and edited it while sitting on his cousin’s couch. The 27-year-old kept tinkering, trying to get the rhythm just right. The final product was good, he thought, and the candidate loved it.
He never imagined it would help change the course of Mississippi political history.
The 30-second digital ad for Democratic Scott Colom — “Pick Another Protein” — ricocheted across the state, the country, and the internet. (At last count, it had 3.7 million views on TikTok.)
The spot riffed off a comment by incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) about the rising cost of beef. “You have so many proteins to choose from,” she noted in February. The ad’s response: Pick another senator instead.
On Wednesday, the Senate race was called for Colom, a historic upset. When Colom stepped up to deliver his victory speech at Tougaloo College in Jackson, the sign in front of the lectern read, “Picked another senator.”
Sayles was in the audience, thrilled and overwhelmed. “Seeing everybody I know and grew up around take the moment in, that was a lot,” he said in an interview Thursday. “That was a whole thing.”
A freelance videographer and content creator, Sayles grew up in Jackson and studied mass communications at Alcorn State University. He never had worked on a political campaign. Last year, a Colom staffer asked Sayles to produce a one-off video for an event. The campaign liked his work so much they decided to keep him.
For “Pick Another Protein,” Sayles said he worked off a script written by Colom; Colom’s twin brother, Andrew; and Colom’s campaign manager, Gerard Henderson. In a post on X, Colom credited Patrick Gaspard, a former official in President Barack Obama’s administration, with the idea of taking Hyde-Smith’s gaffe and “doing something edgy with it.”
When it came to producing the ad, Sayles said he was a “one-man band.” There were no professional actors. The first scene of a man flipping burgers was filmed in the backyard of Colom’s parents’ home in Columbus, Miss.
Shooting on his trusty Sony Alpha 7R V camera, Sayles gave a crucial piece of direction to the man in the first scene, who gives a profane response to the suggestion he pick another protein
“Sheeeeee-it,” the man drawls. “I’d rather pick another senator instead.”
The first word is key, Sayles told him. “You got to drag that part out,” he said.
The ad took three hours to shoot and about four hours to edit. For music, Sayles chose a sample from “Rapper’s Delight,” a 1979 song by the Sugarhill Gang.
“The old funk beat is always a feel-good type thing,” he said. It “gave the cookout vibe.”
The campaign released the ad Oct. 13. A day earlier, Obama had released a video endorsing Colom. Sayles knew the ad had gone full-scale viral when the number of views eclipsed the Obama endorsement and just kept going.
“It’s still hard for me to conceptually understand that something I edited on my cousin’s couch could make it to L.A., could make it to New York, could make it all across the country,” Sayles said.
Colom called Sayles the breakout star of the election cycle. “He did GAME CHANGING work with SO little,” Colom wrote on X.
Sayles hasn’t made any decisions about his future. For now, he’s still savoring the monumental nature of Colom’s win.
Sayles grew up in a family that emphasized “how important it is to take advantage of the rights we have because we did not always have them,” he said. His grandmother marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Sayles used to go to the same church once attended by Medgar Evers, the civil rights activist killed in 1963.
“I know Mississippi is going to be a better place because of what we was able to pull off,” Sayles said. “That means more to me than anything.”
