Donald Trump's viral moment.

Because people in advertising are easily triggered, I will caveat this short post by saying this article is in no way, shape, or form an endorsement of Donald Trump. Are we clear? Okay, good.

Now that I've said that, if Donald Trump (or whoever is running his campaign) had an ad agency that moved at the speed of light, he would be crushing it.

For those who aren't paying attention, Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden. This is normal. In fact, it's the same place that Bill Clinton held his rally along with Al Gore, and we have the racist Confederate Flag badges from back then to prove it.

Anyway, some insult comedian who is well-known for his roasts made an off-color joke about Puerto Rico being an island of garbage, which no one had a problem reporting on back in 2022.

The Harris campaign pounced on this remark by an insult comedian and got Joe Biden (our current president, in case anyone's forgotten) to write a Strongly Worded Comment about it. But then, because America is batshit crazy, people got into an argument about whether Biden called the American voters garbage.

Here’s the video clip the President is referring to. https://t.co/IMuMvhBhsY pic.twitter.com/93bOwp44g5

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) October 30, 2024

This country really is stupid, and I feel for anyone who couldn't avoid the latest news cycle.

All that to say, while people were arguing about garbage, the Trump campaign used it as an excuse to paint the Harris campaign as being out of touch in as close to real-time as possible. They got a garbage truck wrapped with Trump 2024 on it, and then Trump showed up to his 8,000th rally of the month wearing an orange pinny as if he were a garbage collector. This is Oreo's Super Bowl Blackout post on steroids.

And again, for the midwits in the back, this is not an endorsement of the Orange Pinny Man but a testament to understanding the power of not losing a viral moment.

I honestly can't remember the last time an ad agency has done this for a brand in recent years because advertising agencies (especially the holding-company-owned ones) are bloated and slow-moving ships, as are their multi-layered, middle-management-swollen hierarchy that stymies quickness. If you need three signatures to use the bathroom, there's no way you're gonna be able to respond to anything happening in the real world.

Contrast this to Hawk Tuah girl, who parlayed her even dumber five seconds of fame into a successful podcast in less time than it would have taken a dinosaur ad agency to figure out what her real name is.*

So the real lesson here is, if the media landscape is changing and people are getting their news in real time from sites like X, then ad agencies had better figure out a way to increase their speed -- as well as their media company vendors. Whether you like Trump or Harris is irrelevant.

It's an increasingly hectic and chaotic world with more things vying for our attention. And it's even worse for consumers who aren't as plugged in. In other words, speed matters more than ever. If you don't keep up, you are going to be relegated to the useless content garbage heap.

*It's Haliey Welch, by the way.