Ryan Sayles had never worked on a campaign. His ad for Scott Colom got 16 million views.

Ryan Sayles, 27, had never worked on a political campaign. In October he shot the ad that became the signature of Scott Colom’s Senate run, and Colom won, becoming Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction.

Sayles is a content creator from Jackson and an alumnus of Alcorn State University, a historically Black university. As Capital B first reported, Colom’s campaign asked him to film the spot on the day he was celebrating homecoming at his alma mater. He shot it on a Friday morning in early October near Columbus, Mississippi, and edited it that Sunday. The script came from Colom, his identical twin brother Andrew and Gerard Henderson.

The target was a line from Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. In February, with beef prices high, she suggested people “pick another protein.” The ad put that advice to Mississippians at a grill and a diner. “Pick another protein? She done lost her damn mind! I’d rather pick another senator,” an older woman says in one scene. Colom closes it laughing at his own table: “Pick another senator instead.”

Capital B reports the ad was posted Oct. 13 and drew 2.8 million views in its first 36 hours and more than 16 million by Nov. 6. The outlet says that was about four times the views of former President Barack Obama’s endorsement video for Colom. We have not independently counted the views, so treat the totals as Capital B’s.

The slogan outlived the ad. Capital B says Colom’s victory rally carried signs reading “Picked Another Senator.” Sayles also came up with the title of a second, Halloween-themed spot called “Sinators,” a spoof of the film Sinners, shot by cinematographer Kayland Partee with one camera.

The most-watched message of a Senate race in Mississippi, the state with the largest Black population share in the country, was written by a Black candidate and his brother and spoken by working Mississippians tired of being told to eat something else. It was made on one camera over a weekend by someone with no campaign résumé and an HBCU degree.

Campaigns that want to reach Black voters in the South should take the point. The people who know how Mississippi talks are already making content, and Colom’s team went and found one of them. Colom takes his seat in January.