Poole Graduate Sells His Face For Charity

Two entrepreneurs attempting to survive for a year solely by charging businesses to paint their company logos on their faces are giving the profits they make from Christmas Day to charity.

The Cambridge graduates, including Ed Moyse from Poole in Dorset, have made over £11,000 since they started the business in October selling advertising space by the day on their faces and foreheads.

The idea means there are absolutely no days off, including Christmas, but Ross Harper and Ed have decided to give the money they make on Christmas Day to the Alzheimer's Society.

Mr Harper, 22, from Greenwich, south London, said:

''The fun and the novelty of our project is that we are transforming ourselves into walking adverts for the year and the rule of the game, as it were, is to have something on our faces every day, so that includes weekends, family holidays and of course Christmas.

''But Ed and I didn't really want to take money on Christmas, and we thought it was more in the spirit of things to give that money away to charity.''

Mr Harper said in order to make it more inclusive they let their followers vote on which charity would benefit.

''After the public voted it was decided the Alzheimer's Society would receive all the profits and we thought the best way of doing things, to help us raise more money, would be to open up Christmas Day to an auction and encourage companies to bid, so there wouldn't be a limit on how much we could raise.''

Well the auction ended at 11.59pm on Christmas Eve allowing people to bid right up to the last minute and the winning bid was £500.

Mr Moyse, 22, from Poole, Dorset, who studied economics, said:

 ''While we decided to donate the proceeds from Christmas day to just one charity, featuring on the homepage of our website is valuable advertising for any organisation. That was another reason in favour of holding a vote - we'd be raising brand awareness for all the charities involved.''

Mr Harper added:

''Thousands of people click on to buymyface.com every day, in our first month we had over 30,000 people, unique hits, to our website and that is the advertising power.

''We also think that Christmas Day is one of the most, if not the most, important day of the calendar and if people are visiting the site in their thousands every day, and if for years to come people are still talking about 'that project that was done a few years ago', when you look on the calendar to see which company bought which day, Christmas Day is going to be one of the first that you're going to check.''

Talking about their monye-making scheme in general, Mr Harper, a neuroscience graduate, said the business had opened a lot of doors for them:

''We've been so thrilled with how things have gone. Ed and I always thought there was value in what we were doing ... but it's taken off far better than we thought and exceeded our expectations,'' he said.

''We've made £11,000 in just over two months and we've had a great time doing it.

''We've been skiing, go karting, we went sky diving, we've been to the Royal Opera - companies are getting involved in buying our faces and then sending us to fun places so we can get great pictures.''

When they started out three months ago they said they were ''armed only with massive student debt and a firm grasp of the principles of viral advertising''.

Today, Mr Harper added:

 ''We graduated from university with the aim of creating the ultimate one-year job, and I think we've done that.

''We're now putting all our energy into the Christmas Day auction, and we hope that lots of companies will get involved and be generous with their bids.

''We'd like nothing more than to donate a large sum of money to the Alzheimer's Society this Christmas.''

To find out more, log on to their website www.buymyface.co.uk