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The Ad Club of St. Louis has a message for Bob Lachky: We love you, man!

Lachky, former chief creative officer of Anheuser-Busch, will be honored at a luncheon today at St. Louis University’s Busch Center. Its theme: Let us salute Anheuser-Busch’s advertising, and the local folks who helped craft it.

Lachky helped guide iconic campaigns such as the Budweiser frogs and “Wassup,” as well as the commercial featuring the Budweiser Clydesdales honoring the fallen of Sept. 11.

Lachky and Anheuser-Busch helped put St. Louis ad agencies “on the map,” said Tim Leon, president of Clayton-based marketing group Geile/Leon.

The advertising industry is tough in this economy. Marketing is one of the first things to be whacked when companies start digging in for a hard slog. In St. Louis - an under-appreciated advertising center to begin with, locals say - the takeover of Anheuser-Busch by famously thrifty InBev injected an additional dose of uncertainty.

Advertising professionals and casual beer drinkers wonder whether Anheuser-Busch will continue its run of well-recognized marketing campaigns now that it’s owned by the Belgian brewer.

Success on that score could help the St. Louis advertising scene, which often seems to play second fiddle to glitzier locales such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami.

Anheuser-Busch does use local ad shops, but its main agency, DDB, is in Chicago.

Lachky, 55, remains in the St. Louis area, although he says he has received offers of work requiring lots of travel. He is forming a partnership with Tony Ponturo, a longtime sports and digital marketing guru at Anheuser-Busch who also left the company as InBev took control.

Now, one of Lachky’s unofficial roles seems to be chatting up the potential and track record of St. Louis-based ad agencies.

“It would benefit us all if we celebrated a little more the great creative that has come out of St. Louis over the years,” he said. The agencies “have done a phenomenal job. We have tremendous talent. Let’s share the spotlight.”

Leaders of several local agencies are scheduled to chat during the luncheon about how A-B advertising campaigns came to be. “Hopefully we get some of the stories behind the campaigns,” said Leon. “You see some of this stuff, and it’s like, ‘How did they come up with this?’”