FCB Chicago called with a short brief. Bud Light needed a neon sign for Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles. That was most of it.
I joined the team handling out-of-home and retail for the campaign. Super Bowl LVI was the first in Los Angeles in 29 years. The Rams were back. SoFi Stadium was new. The city was stepping into its biggest global decade: the World Cup in 2026, the Olympics in 2028. I had lived in LA long enough to have real feelings about it. That made the brief feel personal before it was professional. I wanted to make something that spoke to the city's history. Something people would put on the wall and keep long after the game ended.
Client
Bud Light / AB InBev
Agency
FCB Chicago
Role
Senior Art Director
Year
2022
Scope
OOH, retail, neon sign design
Los Angeles Biergarten (2022)— Historic Broadway Theater District, Downtown Los Angeles
What the sign needed to be
The obvious direction was Hollywood. Every agency briefed on LA goes there first. I wasn't interested in the shorthand. I was thinking about the city underneath the city.
Los Angeles is the original city of lights. After Paris, before the marquee culture of Hollywood took over the story. From the 1920s through the 1960s, LA built one of the world's great neon landscapes. The Broadway corridor downtown, where the American film industry actually started. Theater marquees running for blocks. That history lives in the walls of buildings most people walk past without looking up.
It also draws a direct line to Paris. Two cities defined by light. Two consecutive Olympic hosts. The connection wasn't incidental. It was there if you looked for it.
I wanted the sign to belong to that history. Something that felt like LA had always had it. Something people would want to keep.
What happened after
The signs went into distribution across LA. Bars, clubs, anywhere Bud Light had a presence. A few weeks later, I was walking past a bar in downtown LA and saw both signs in the window, displayed prominently while a party was happening inside. I went in and asked if I could film them. That was the first time I saw the work in the world.
It didn't stop there. The signs kept appearing. Restaurants. Grocery stores. I eventually spotted one at a grocery outlet in Palm Springs. Product placement has a long relationship with artifacts. The things that outlast the campaign and become part of a place's texture. That's what I was thinking about when I designed it. That's what it became.
Credits
John Hultman — Art Direction
Tony Mavrelis — Creative Director, FCB Chicago
©2026 HU__MAN (John Glenn Hultman). All Rights Reserved. Do not repost without notification and attribution.