What a Cheesy 80's Commercial Taught Me About Great Storytelling
It only took 30 seconds to make a memory that’s lasted 30 years
When I think about the first time a piece of storytelling lodged itself in my brain and refused to leave, I don’t think of a novel, or a film, or a speech.
I think of this string cheese commercial:
It aired in the late 1980s. A kid—maybe 12 years old, with blond, classic 80s wave-combed hair, a leather jacket, and a kind of Ricky Schroeder-esque confidence—walks into a pizza shop.
He steps up to the counter and says:
“Gimme a cheese pizza. But, hold the crust… and hold the sauce.”
The guy behind the counter stares at him. “Hold the crust?! Hold the sauce?!?” Then he turns to the kitchen:
“Hey Jimmy! Gimme a cheese with nothin’!”
I think about this commercial more than I would like to admit. I bring it up in meetings. I reference it in workshops. I’ve shown it to my wife and kids.
Because buried in that ad are five principles I’ve seen again and again in every story that lasts—whether it’s a brand campaign, a short film, or a message trying to move culture.
1. Surprise is sticky.
Cognitive psychology—and marketing research—backs this up. As the great Jonah Berger has written, surprise acts as a kind of mental spotlight. When we’re caught off guard, we pay attention.
When I was leading brand campaigns at Great Big Story, surprise was often the first test for whether something was worth telling. If a story didn’t make you lean in—or challenge what you thought you knew—it usually didn’t go further than the pitch meeting.
A kid ordering a pizza without crust or sauce disorients us just enough to make the brain work harder to interpret the message. That friction—when used right—is memory fuel.
2. Simplicity carries weight.
This wasn’t a layered narrative. It was simple.
They used pizza—something nearly everyone loves—as the trigger, and then stripped it down to its essence: cheese. Ostensibly, the best part (at least according to Polly-O).
The ad forces you to think about something familiar, and then redirects your attention to their product. No heavy cognitive load.
FWIW – I still can’t order a slice without thinking of this ad. It worked. 🫡
3. Characters create entry points.
The ad also works because it uses memorable characters: the no-nonsense New York pizza guy, the swaggering kid, the confused pizza chef, “Jimmy.”
These aren’t deep character studies, but they’re culturally coded in a way that creates memorable entry points for message delivery.
On the urban East Coast, where I grew up, these archetypes hit immediately. My wife, who grew up in Seattle, had never seen the commercial. She found it hilarious, but also admitted it never would’ve landed in Seattle when she was growing up.
That kind of shorthand works when the audience knows the code. That’s how specific—and powerful—your characters can be.
4. The architecture of a memorable line.
Certain phrases are engineered to echo. “Cheese with nothing” is one of them.
Its rhythm, its paradox, its specificity—they all contribute to a kind of phonetic stickiness. Good slogans do this. But good stories do too. They use rhythm and phrasing to build structures we don’t even realize we’re remembering.
(On a related note, here’s a fun video of Seinfeld talking about this dynamic in joke writing.)
5. Mystery lingers.
In the final beat of the commercial, the characters break into French and Italian—“Magnifique! Bellissimo! C’est bon!”
There’s no obvious reason for this multilingual flourish. And that’s partly the point. It just adds texture. It opens a loop that the brain never fully closes.
In storytelling, ambiguity—used well—can drive curiosity long after the content ends.
I bring all of this up not to overanalyze a string cheese ad, but because it illustrates something I think about constantly in my work across marketing, branding, and storytelling: what makes a story last?
In a world overloaded with content, attention isn’t given—it’s earned.
And the stories that earn it don’t shout. They surprise and connect in unexpected ways.
And sometimes, they simply serve up a cheese… with nothin’.