In their scruffy jeans and trainers, Ross Harper and Ed Moyse look just like any other British 22-year-olds — except for the words “Buy My Face” and “Sold” emblazoned brightly on their faces.
Standing in the middle of London’s shopping mecca Oxford Circus, the two Cambridge University graduates attract more than a few curious glances from the hoards of passers-by.
“How much?” a young man calls out from a gaggle of Spanish tourists, to which Harper, a former neuroscience student, replies that it’s £100 (US$160) to hire the two faces as advertising space for the day.
Photo: AFP
“A hundred pounds?” The tourists throw up their hands in mock outrage before bursting into laughter.
There may be no customers here, but others are queuing to hire the two human billboards. Harper and Moyse have made more than £30,000 since setting up Buy My Face in October last year in a bid to pay off their student debts.
The enterprising duo plan to launch the business, which works by directing online traffic to advertisers’ Web sites through their own entertaining site, on the international market next month.
“We’ve had interest from places like Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, the United States and all over Europe,” Harper said.
With record youth unemployment of 22 percent in Britain, and even graduates from prestigious universities such as Cambridge struggling to find work as the economy stalls, theirs is an unusual success story.
“We were coming up with ideas for what we wanted to do after we left university,” economics graduate Moyse said. “And we thought: ‘The job market’s really tough at the moment. Why don’t we try a creative project for a year?’”
The pair, who each borrowed £25,000 from the government to fund their studies, came up with Buy My Face over a pot of instant noodles last year while brainstorming business ideas that required only minimal investment.
“We’re £50,000 in debt — we didn’t want to invest thousands more into a business,” said Moyse, adding that they spent just £100 on face-paint.
Since Oct. 1 last year, he and Harper have managed to “sell” their faces every single day — to large companies such as Irish bookmaker Paddy Power and accountants Ernst & Young, as well as smaller firms.
“On the very first day we sold them for £1,” Moyse recalled, turning to Harper and adding: “Not a very good graduate wage, was it?”
However, as word has spread about the scheme and with Web site traffic now peaking at about 7,000 visits a day, they have been able to command higher rates.
They currently rent their faces for up to £400 a day to advertisers, who can pay for them to complete eye-catching stunts, from skydiving to plunging into icy rivers. And they may raise prices again as their online following grows.
“The idea isn’t about seeing us in the real world,” Moyse said. “It’s about getting good photos and funny videos on our Web site, and that’s seen by thousands of people every day.”
In a world where successful viral advertising campaigns spread rapidly online through social networking Web sites, humor and creativity are crucial, said Patrick Barwise, professor of marketing at the London Business School.
“All you need to do is create something which other people will want to pass on,” he said.
“They’re obviously very enterprising,” he said of Harper and Moyse, “but I’d be surprised if it’s that sustainable. Marketing is enormously faddish.”
The graduates happily admit this.
“What we’re doing now is a gimmicky thing,” said Harper, adding that whatever its success abroad, their own face-painting days will end in September.
At that point the double act intend to set up another business, while also managing newly recruited face-painters in Britain and abroad.
“We sometimes refer to it as an entrepreneurial gap year,” Harper said. “The reason we started with Buy My Face was that it didn’t require any investment. But now we’ve got some money to invest into another idea.”
Their success may be of some comfort to other British students battling huge debts, particularly those starting university later this year, who face a controversial tripling of tuition fees.
Students who begin degrees in England this year will graduate with £59,100 debt on average, according to the Push university guide.
“Students going to university now — the fees have just risen, so they’ll be coming out with about three times as much debt as we had,” Moyse said. “Hopefully they can take inspiration from our story.”
However, the pair’s parting words suggest they have a way to go before becoming dotcom millionaires.
“Could we get expenses on our train tickets?” Moyse asked hopefully.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”