When your four years of college reach an end, the time to apply for real careers arrives. You walked through all your pre-requisites, mastered your core classes and aced your CAPstones. May is just round the corner, and your last “we regret to inform you…” letter was delivered yesterday.
Now what?
You are a college graduate with no job, no place to go and loans to pay off. So how are you going to do it?
Two graduates from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, Ross Harper and Ed Moyse, found themselves in this exact situation. The pair decided to begin a peculiar, year-long project consisting of a new way to advertise-BuyMyFace.co.uk.
The idea behind the project was for Harper and Moyse to pay off their student loans by selling their faces as advertising space every day for a year. Each day, Harper and Moyse paint a different logo, drawing or symbol on their faces for eight hours as an advertisement for different companies.
At this time, Harper and Moyse have advertised their faces for over four months without skipping a day and have earned £31,632 toward their total £50,000 of college debt. Companies pay Harper and Moyse to show their faces in as many places as possible for the day they are bought, such as theme parks, department stores and even skydiving.
Terri L. Rittenburg, associate professor of marketing at the University of Wyoming, said she had heard of people tattooing logos on themselves before, but this idea is much better.
“Marketers always look for ways to grab people’s attention, which is harder and harder to do today,” she said.
Rittenburg said at first the idea would be new and novel and grab attention, but is unsure about how long it would last. The idea of advertising is promoting your product for consumers to gain awareness of the brand, she said.
“The face painting is less intrusive, and as a consumer I can look away if I don’t like it,” Rittenburg said.
Marketers struggle with new ideas of advertising though.
“Companies are constantly looking for ways to expose people to their messages, and that’s not easy to do today with the fragmented media markets and thousands of stimuli to which consumers are exposed every day,” Rittenburg said.
Global Business Club President Christine Baldwin said the United States uses more conventional ways of advertising.
“I think it would be successful in the United States at first, but it would be short lived,” Baldwin said.
She explained it is difficult to keep Americans’ attention.
“It’s like seeing someone’s shirt say ‘Abercrombie’, technically that’s advertisement, but after a while you start to ignore it,” Baldwin said.
In Bladwin’s opinion, this idea needs work and dedication if anyone would really want it to take off in America.
“You would need to first find companies that would buy people, then need people willing to paint their face and then the consumers would have to accept the notion of the ad,” she said.
Companies that have bought Harper and Moyse’s wrote positive comments on the duo’s website.
“We had a 3 percent increase in website traffic on the day leading up to and the two days following our sponsored day. This was a noticeable difference and did cause a spike that we were not expecting,” Naomi Kibble of Rocktails, an alcoholic beverage company, said.
“BuyMyFace demonstrates how the nature of marketing is changing in a novel and innovative way. Ernst & Young are pleased to participate in their new venture and wish Ross and Ed the best of luck,” Stephen Isherwood, Head of Graduate Recruitment at Ernst and Young, said. Ernest and Young is a professional advising firm that is sponsoring Harper and Moyse’s enterprise.
