Students ‘sell faces’ to ELL to pay debt

Ross as Eastlondonlines. Pic: Emily Fordham

Two graduates from east London ‘sold’ their faces to Eastlondonlines yesterday as part of their creative advertising plan to pay off student debt.

Ross Harper, 21, from Blackheath, and Ed Moyse, 22, from Dorset, came up with the scheme over a chicken and mushroom Pot Noodle as they neared their final exams at Cambridge University. The prospect of job hunting and paying off student debt loomed and ‘Buy My Face’ was born.

The idea is pretty straightforward. Companies or individuals buy a specific day, the price rising by £1 each day, and for those 24 hours they have control over the faces of Ross and Ed.

The boys paint a logo or a message onto their faces in the morning and spend the rest of the day doing, in their words, “something in the real world that makes following us online that bit more interesting”.

The duo record each day’s antics in the form of a blog on the site (www.buymyface.com) and use social network sites such as twitter to further spread their messages.

With most of October booked up already, exposure in local newspapers and a dedicated Facebook group, the boys look set to achieve their goal of having every day until October 2012 bought.

Eastlondonlines were so impressed with the idea that they decided to take part and bought control of Ross and Ed’s faces for one day. Displaying the Eastlondonlines logo in face paint, the pair spent the day in Bluewater, a large shopping centre just outside of South East London.

Ross said: “Yesterday we decided to implement a new type of guerilla advertising and left East London Lines homepage on every public computer we could find!”

“It was just a bit of fun really and kind of silly, but it’s the sort of thing which is making people want to visit our site and keep up to date with what we are doing”, he added.

For more information on what happened yesterday and to keep up to date with Ross and Ed’s adventures visit the ‘Our Story’ page on their website www.buymyface.com

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