The More Specific the Character, the More Universal the Story

This Publix Back to School spot has been watched more than 20 million times, and I think part of why it connected is that we didn’t try to make the family more universal. We made them more specific.

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The story centers on a single dad getting his daughter ready for school, including doing her hair.

The family structure, the hair, their relationship, and the little details of their morning all helped make the characters feel like real people rather than generic versions of a parent and child.

One of the biggest decisions actually came during casting.

The daughter was originally written as 7–9 years old. After our first round of casting, the Publix internal creative team, Jimena Lopez Fate and Lindsay Fraser, and I realized the writing required a level of subtlety and emotional control that was difficult to find at that age.

So we opened up the casting.

That’s when we found Kierra Pitts, and everything clicked.

It reinforced something I believe strongly about casting: the specifications on the page are there to serve the story, not the other way around. If age, appearance, or another detail is getting in the way of the performance the story needs, it’s worth asking which one actually matters most.

And when it comes to authenticity, specificity is often what makes a story feel universal.

Don’t be afraid to make the characters unique. Give them a particular family structure, personality, hair, background, rhythm, and point of view. Those details don’t make a story narrower. They’re often the reason someone sees themselves in it.