LOS ANGELES -- From the outside, the set of Bud Light's Super Bowl commercial looks like any other construction site in downtown Los Angeles. Most passers-by, in fact, barely look up as they walk past the graffiti-filled plywood walls that surround the action.
I was on set the day in early January after the big filming for the commercial, and people were casually walking by the giant coin slot -- which, during the commerical, opens up to reaveal a life-sized version of the Pac-Man game.
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Less than 20 days later, Bud Light would unveil this video -- its official 2015 Super Bowl spot.
The ad is a continuation of the brand's "The Perfect Beer for Whatever Happens" campaign, which resulted in a star-packed ad last year chronicling one man's epic night out.
But over the summer, as the company brainstormed for this year's Super Bowl spot, it decided to present an unsuspecting subject with a different kind of star power.
"We thought the retro aspect of [Pac-Man] was really powerful for our audience -- the millennial audience," said Mark Taylor, chief creative officer at Chicago-based advertising agency, Energy BBDO, who worked with Anheuser Busch on the ad. "And Pac-Man, in a sense, is iconic. It's almost like a celebrity unto itself, so it felt special."
After the usual rounds of marketing testing that come before every high-profile Super Bowl ad in November, Energy roped in Pac-Man developers Bandai Namco Games America. But the journey from concept to primetime commercial had many moving parts.
Literally.
They had to figure out how to make real life look like a game. To make ghosts glide, they hired world champion roller skaters to wear costumes.
To make the ghosts change color when prompted, they hired the company behind the costume in Iron Man to create suits.
To get enough lights to line a giant maze, they found someone to make 1,500 feet of custom lighting.
It all came together, but for a price -- a price that would "buy a few nice houses or one in LA," joked Energy executive producer Rob Tripas. But it was worth it, Taylor said.
The maze is entirely to scale, down to the spacing between the power pellets and each curve in the walls.
"When millions of people see this ... they're going to want to run through this maze," said Jason Enos, associate director of marketing at Bandai Namco Games.
Which begs the question: When can the public run through it?
"All this effort went into making this ... it would be somewhat of a shame for it to be a one-and-done thing," Enos said.
"We built this thing to be packed up and moved, so I really hope to get a lot more use out of it," Taylor added.
Us, too.
