Eddie Thompson deserves a raise. As a brand ambassador for Florida-based AirSign, he helped an Alabama client produce “spectacular” skywriting and banners over the Rose Parade and several bowl games.

Anti-Trump sign over Orange Bowl in Miami. Photo courtesy of AirSign.
Anti-Trump sign over Orange Bowl in Miami. Photo courtesy of AirSign.
Their message: Anybody but Trump.

Contacted Wednesday for a sky campaign, AirSign in two days put together one of its most “spectacular” shows in history, Thompson said. The client has a super PAC — We the People Foundation and a week-old website, anybodybuttrump.us.

“I pushed him in the morning, saying: ‘Hey, this is what we ought to do.’ And he agreed to it by Wednesday afternoon,” Thompson said, adding that a Pasadena crew with three video cameras and two still cameras would document it for the client.

He said his client was Stan Pate, whose name was first revealed by CBS News. Pate is Tuscaloosa real estate developer and financial backer of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

“We worked on this together,” Thompson said of the messages.

CBS quoted Pate as saying: “[Trump] needs to go back to one of his tall towers and build buildings and whatever else he does. He’s a despicable man. … I want to see America wake up and say this is not what we expect.”

Thompson told MyNewsLA.com that Pate wanted a smaller campaign at first but was advised to do a Donald Trump-style display.

“You gotta go big,” Thompson said, to send a message to the GOP front-runner. “The only way you should do it is how Donald Trump would send a message — a message in the sky with a 15-mile viewing radius.”

The message was telegraphed by AirSign before the parade:

Good morning Pasadena, we have a surprise for you! Be sure to look up starting at 8:30am. #AnybodyButTrump #digitalskywriting #RoseParade

Posted by AirSign Aerial Advertising on Friday, January 1, 2016

The client is “basically a guy who doesn’t like Trump, period (who says) ‘I don’t like his message. I don’t like what he says. And I don’t think he’s good for America,’” Thompson said in a phone interview Friday.

Over the Capital One Orange Bowl in Miami on Thursday, a banner with 7-foot-tall letters said: “WWJD & SAY? PSALM 51 ANYBODYBUTTRUMP.US.” Psalm 51 says in part “Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.”

Thompson said the Rose Parade targeted Pasadena but could also be seen in Los Angeles. Other planes flew anti-Trump signs over Cotton Bowl in Arlington, Texas, and one in New Orleans.

AirSign, founded in 1996, made a huge mark in the sky for Pi Day on March 14, 2014, when its planes drew hundreds of digits of pi over Austin at the South By Southwest festival.

Other major projects included an October T-Mobile campaign over Verizon and AT&T buildings.

But the Pi Day campaign “put us in a different stratosphere. That went crazy viral — we wrote for 90 minutes in sequence the numbers of Pi.” But for “explosion rate,” the Trump sign over Colorado Boulevard was the largest the company has seen. “This is just crazy.”

Reaction to AirSign’s latest campaign were retweeted by AirSignUSA.

The nationwide company is based outside of Gainesville, Florida — a “small little town called Williston. “There’s one Taco Bell, one McDonald’s,” said Thompson, who turned 40 Thursday.

He wouldn’t say how much the Rose Parade sky show cost.

According to domain name records, anybodybuttrump.was registered Dec. 22.

We the People Foundation is described as the creation of New York tax-protester Robert Schulz.

“America is great! Trump is disgusting” were the first words across the sky over Pasadena, later followed by “Putin Eats Trump for Dessert.”

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