A Flag, a Proposal, an Arrest — and a Pressure Washing Company in Broward Just Ran the Best Playbook in Marketing
- Rich Washburn
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
On Wednesday, two climbers named Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus scaled the antenna of the Empire State Building, 1,454 feet up, no ropes, no tether — just a narrow ledge and a lot of nerve. They unfurled a black banner with a line widely attributed to Jimi Hendrix: "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." Then Ivan pulled a ring out of his backpack, got down on one knee, and proposed. Then they got arrested.
It was, by any measure, one of the strangest news cycles of the year — a proposal, a felony, and a peace quote, all stitched together 200 feet above midtown Manhattan. Within a day, the internet had done what the internet does: the photo of two masked figures holding that flag against the sky became a meme template. People started swapping out the banner.
A pressure washing company in Broward County, Florida did it better than anyone else I've seen. And here's the part I actually love about it: they didn't stage anything. They just took the real news photo and swapped the flag.
What Under Pressure Cleaning Actually Did
Under Pressure Cleaning Solutions of Broward — a licensed, insured, 5-star-rated roof and pressure cleaning outfit that's been serving the county since 2012 — took the actual viral photo of the two climbers and dropped their own logo onto the banner. That's it. No photoshoot, no models on a ledge, no production budget. Just the real image, with "Under Pressure Cleaning of Broward," their logo, and their phone number pasted onto the flag where the Hendrix quote used to be.
This is a three-minute job with an AI image tool, or a five-minute job in Photoshop for anyone who knows what they're doing. There was no grand gesture here, no crew, no risk, no cost beyond someone's lunch break. And that's exactly why it's such a good example — the barrier to doing this was basically zero, and almost nobody else took the shot. No press release. No agency. No week of legal review. Somebody on their team saw a viral news photo less than 48 hours old, recognized the shape of the meme forming around it, and spent a few minutes turning their own company into the punchline — in the good way. It rode the wave at the exact moment the wave was still building, not after it had already crested and every other business tried the same joke a week too late.
I wrote about this exact instinct back in November when Böcker — the German lift manufacturer whose equipment was used in the actual Louvre heist — posted their machine's photo next to the crime scene with the tagline "Mein Weg nach oben" ("My way to the top"). No corporate crouch, no tepid statement, no three morning meetings full of spin doctors. Just: yep, that's ours, and it's fast. That post did more for their brand in one day than a year of trade show banners.
Under Pressure Cleaning just ran the exact same play, with even less effort involved, and nailed it just as hard.
Why This Is the Actual Skill
Here's the thing people miss about newsjacking done well: it isn't about production value, and it definitely isn't about effort. Plenty of businesses pour real budget into "being funny online" and it lands flat, or worse, it reads as forced and a little sad. What separates Böcker and Under Pressure Cleaning from the graveyard of try-hard brand posts is speed combined with restraint — and neither of those things costs money.
Speed, because a meme has a shelf life measured in hours, not days. If your legal team has to sign off, you've already lost the moment. Restraint, because the joke has to actually be good — visually clean, immediately recognizable, and confident enough that it doesn't need to over-explain itself. Under Pressure Cleaning didn't caption their photoshopped image with three paragraphs about "capturing this cultural moment." They just posted it and let it work.
That combination — moving fast enough to catch the wave, and having good enough taste to do it without embarrassing yourself — is a genuinely rare skill, and it has almost nothing to do with how much time or money you throw at it. It's part creative instinct, part organizational speed. A business that can spot a 48-hour-old viral photo, do a five-minute edit, and get it posted before the trend dies is a business that makes decisions fast and doesn't drown itself in process. That's usually the same instinct that shows up in how they handle a customer complaint, a scheduling conflict, or a scope change on a job site — not because editing a photo proves operational excellence, but because the willingness to move without waiting for permission usually isn't limited to marketing.
Give Credit Where It's Due
I don't have a roof that needs cleaning right now, and this isn't a sponsored post — I have no relationship with this company. But I know a good instinct when I see one, and more importantly, I know what it signals. A small, local, unglamorous service business that can out-market companies ten times its size with a five-minute edit and zero budget deserves more attention than it's going to get organically. If you're in Broward County and you need your roof or your driveway pressure washed, I'd genuinely start there — not because I was asked to say so, but because a company paying this much attention is very likely just as sharp about the actual work.
More broadly: more businesses should be doing this. Not recklessly, not tastelessly, not chasing every trend that scrolls past — but when a genuine cultural moment hands you a shape you can fill with your own brand, and you can do it in five minutes with a tool that's already sitting on your phone, take the shot. Böcker did it with a heist. Under Pressure Cleaning did it with a marriage proposal 1,454 feet in the air, and a quick photo edit. Neither of them needed a marketing agency. They just needed someone paying attention and willing to spend five minutes.
That's the whole lesson. Pay attention. Move fast. Have taste. You don't need a budget for any of it.
Rich Washburn is a technologist and strategist working at the intersection of AI, infrastructure, and capital. He is Managing Partner and Chief AI Officer at Eliakim Capital and CIO of Data Power Supply.
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