LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A beer company plans to target Little Rock during the Super Bowl. Nothing about that is unusual. This commercial will not sell lagers, though, but a chance at financial freedom.
Natural Light, better known as Natty Light, is a part of the college experience for many students because it is often the cheapest brand in the store. For the second year in a row, it is returning the favor, offering a million dollars for people who want help paying off their student loans.
Joe Cline, a sophomore working toward an associate degree at UA Little Rock, thought the campaign was a great idea.
“This fall, when I graduate,” he explained, “if everything continues to go like it is, and I keep on working, but also taking out student loans, it’d probably be around somewhere between $15,000-20,000 in student loans.”
Cline said he initially enrolled in a bachelor program for Mass Communications, Media Production, and Film, but had to change plans when UA Little Rock dropped the program. With it went the scholarship he depended on. He took a year off to work full time, knowing he would need to earn some money to save for future student loan payments.
“Over time, they begin to build up,” he said, “and that’s why I ended up taking that year gap, because I couldn’t afford school anymore. And I didn’t want to go into that much debt with student loans.”
This year’s Super Bowl commercial for Natty Light will only run in five metro areas that have high levels of student-loan debt, and Little Rock is one. (The others are Columbia, South Carolina, Jackson, Mississippi, Raleigh, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia.) According to data from the U.S. Department of Education’s office of Federal Student Aid, the average borrower in Arkansas carried approximately $30,833 of student loan debt.
“Imagine if these people can take that $300 a month,” Cline said, “and just have it to use for anything else but student loans? Man! That would change a lot of people’s perspectives and a lot of people’s lives.
“Those are the decisions that make people not want to help other people, really, because they feel like they can’t, they don’t have the resources to do that.”
Cline said he believed so many Arkansans struggle with large amounts of student loan debt because of a lack of financial literacy.
“If you didn’t learn budgeting in high school, you don’t know it,” he stated. “Right? So, for someone like me who’s coming and going into a field, into a place where there’s not a lot of money offered, opportunities like this are breathtaking.
“So, I went through high school, right, went through two years of school here, in college, and it wasn’t until I took my gap, my year gap to get my finances together, that I actually knew what a budget literally looked like on a computer. I didn’t know what a budget was until maybe a few months ago. Like, a legit, spreadsheet budget, which is—that legit blows my mind. That literally blows my mind. I’m 22 years old and I’m just now looking at a budget for the first time.”
According to Anheuser-Busch, which owns Natty Light, 70 people will split the million-dollar prize. To enter the contest, people have to submit a video to social media explaining why college is important to them.
“I can’t even imagine how incredible that is, that they’re doing something like that,” Cline said. “And, even mentioning it to my friends (this afternoon), they were blown away and they were already looking on their phones and stuff, like, how can I be a part of this? Is this only for college students now? Can I do it if I’ve graduated? Like, all these different questions. I’m like (shrugs)…you know? So, people are definitely interested, and I’m interested in it.”
According to the official contest rules, anyone who had been enrolled in college within the last 10 years may enter. Cline, who hopes to join the ministry after graduation, said he would relish the chance to receive only a degree this fall and not loan payments.
“Oh, I absolutely will enter this contest, and I hope I win,” he said. “So, if you’re watching this, people from the company, please, I want to win this contest!”
The contest is open to people aged 21 and over.