Perhaps initially, you only tracked the cheesesteak itself. “Looks like a yummy cheesesteak,” you thought. Or your subconscious conveyed the same information. Eventually, though, if you’re a true San Francisco Giants fan, you paid attention to the full, inescapable Cheese Steak Shop advertisement starring outfielder Alex Dickerson. And that means you know exactly what I’m talking about, and why I’m writing about it.

For the uninitiated: This ad, for a Bay Area cheesesteak chain that aims to deliver a “real-deal, Philly-style sandwich,” played on NBC Sports Bay Area more times than anyone can count, meaning Giants fans would remember it even if it were 30 seconds of a still image. But that’s very much not what the ad is — and the people who made it are quite aware.

I’m going to describe the ad, and then encourage you to watch it yourself. Dickerson walks into one of the stores. He’s masked up, and he politely fist bumps some customers, who — and I genuinely mean no offense to any parties involved, it’s just impossible to ignore — would have zero shot of recognizing a masked Dickerson at a cheesesteak chain. Dickerson begins a voice-over about his father, who was an F-14 fighter pilot in the Navy, while there’s b-roll of cheesesteaks, mostly. The music is somber. 

We transition to a shot where Dickerson is sitting at a table. He has an uneaten cheesesteak in front of him. “Knowing that he sacrificed so much for me to have the life I have? It means the world to me,” he says of his father, as he tears up.

Why is Dickerson talking about his father? Because, the ad reveals, the Cheese Steak Shop is promoting a Hometown Heroes special, where you can nominate folks for their exemplary community work, and they can win a $50 gift card plus $100 to a charity.

It’s a lot to process at once, and then an unanticipated pivot happens: Dickerson takes an enormous goddamn chomp of a cheesesteak, and the last two seconds of the ad are him saying, “This is legitimately the best cheesesteak I’ve had outside of Philly.”

Boom. Fade to black. Back to the ball game. We’re hungry, we’re sad, now we’re satisfied. Cheesesteak? In belly. Philly-style.

I unironically love this commercial. I think it’s hilarious. I am not laughing at Dickerson, who’s telling a nice story about a family member. I am laughing at how the commercial unfolded, how they clearly needed to squeeze everything into 30 seconds. And I’m laughing at how the finished product — which knocks you on your ass in the first few seconds and never lets up — became the most visible, recognizable advertisement of the Giants season, their best in team history. 

So I reached out to the Cheese Steak Shop and Yellow Bus, the advertising agency behind the commercial, for more context. Anything to help explain how this masterpiece came together. They happily obliged.

Tony Bendana, president and chief operating officer of the Cheese Steak Shop, says he’s worked with Yellow Bus for a while. He’s friends with Yellow Bus founder Austin Sherwood. Sherwood and his team, based in Santa Cruz, pitched the concept for the ad to Bendana, who was all for it.

Sherwood knew Dickerson was a little nervous and camera shy. Going in, he pared down the shoot to himself, a director, a camera person and an audio person. The shoot was the morning of a Giants game, and Sherwood asked for four hours with the Giants outfielder. He ended up getting two, which is not ideal. But Dickerson was professional and polite and unexpectedly cried when he started talking about his dad. There was no script, obviously.

Unfortunately, it’s tough to end a cheesesteak advertisement with a person crying. It is not necessarily a positive association. Luckily for Sherwood, Dickerson finally took a bite of the cheesesteak.

“He was supposed to do what they call the bite and smile,” Sherwood said. “And we were still rolling audio when he said, ‘Oh my God, this is legitimately the best cheesesteak I’ve had outside of Philly.’ We weren’t even planning to capture that. It’s just something that he said. It felt like we weren’t doing it justice if we weren’t able to include that.”

Sherwood maintains he’s in on the joke — that he was moved by what Dickerson said, but he knows the abrupt transition at the end is funny. “That’s exactly what it was there for,” he told me. “It has mixed reviews — some of the YouTube reviews, people trashed us for doing it that way. Other people saluted us. If you’re not standing out, you’re not doing your job.”

Apparently, that was the only cheesesteak Dickerson ate for the day. “He could have had as many as he wanted,” Bendana wrote over email. “I believe that he had a game that evening and did not want to load up and not be ready for the game. Our sandwiches are quite large and can fill one up for a better part of a day. Alex can have as many cheese steaks as he wants! He just needs to show up to our shops, as we all love Alex for promoting The Cheese Steak Shop!”

As for why that advertisement ended up on air approximately a bazillion times? (Bendana’s estimate is at least 400.) According to Sherwood — whose agency does strategy, creative and media buys — it’s all about who you know.

“Every advertiser has holes they have to fill with something,” he said. “You either fill it with someone who pays you the most money, which is not us, or you fill it with stuff you like or people you like. I’ve been buying media in advertising with the Giants and A’s for 20 years, and a lot of this is relationship-drive. We’re a constant advertiser. I think the station liked the ad. I know the Giants liked it.”
Bendana says Giants fans have relayed to him how much they like it, too. “It is unbelievable how many customers who [had] not heard of us now have!” he wrote. 

All publicity is good publicity, they say. I admit it’s hard for me to take the commercial as seriously as others might, but it’s absolutely ingrained in my head more than any other advertisement I’ve seen in a while. Which is the point.

“[Alex Dickerson] really felt what he was saying,” Sherwood said. “It was genuine and not cheesy. To have that in 30 seconds, and then come back with an Easter egg at the end? That ad is a home run.”