Anheuser-Busch’s Natural Light, aka Natty Light, is popular among college students for its low cost and calorie count. In 2018, the brand made a decade-long commitment to support its most avid fans with the “College Debt Relief Program." The initiative calls attention to the growing student debt crisis in the U.S. while providing relief of $1 million a year to those weighed down by their school loans. To reinvigorate the program as it went into its fourth year, Natural Light worked with M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment, A-B in-house agency Draftline and experiential agency and production firm The Bait Shoppe on “The Da Vinci of Debt,” described as “the world’s most expensive piece of art.”

See all of Ad Age's 2021 Small Agency Award winners here.

The effort kicked off with a social push that asked students to rent their college diplomas to the brand for $100 going toward their college debt, resulting in 8,640 credentials collected. That alone led to 154 media placements and nearly 76 million impressions. 

Natural Light then incorporated more than 2,000 of those certificates in a massive art installation that appeared in New York’s Grand Central Station. Given the average cost of a four-year college education is nearly $200K, the beer brand calculated the value of the final artwork at $470 million dollars, besting the record of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi,” which sold for more than $450 million in 2017.

See all of Ad Age's 2021 Small Agency Award winners here.