A PAIR of inventive graduates who both planned to pay off their student debts by carrying adverts painted on their faces have seen their idea snowball.

First featured in the Daily Echo in September last year, Ed Moyse, from Poole, and Ross Harper, from London, were originally charging £1 a day for adverts as they aimed to clear their £50,000 debts.

Fast forward six months and demand has seen them being able to charge £400 a day, with huge corporate names wanting to get on board, including global accountancy firm, Ernst and Young and bookmaker Paddy Power.

Their Buy My Face business has seen the Cambridge graduates being sent around the world to get their clients’ names noticed – including a skiing trip to the Alps so Ernst and Young could advertise to potential new recruits – and they have already paid off more than half their target. What started as a novel way to do so has now turned into a booming business.

Ed, 22, told the Daily Echo: “We’re incredibly pleased with how it’s been going. We have had quite a lot of job offers and done lots of fun things like going skiing and skydiving.

“We’ve been making a huge dent in our student loans and hopefully by the end of the year we will have them paid back.”

The charge advertisers pay gets them a day of face time plus an ongoing online advert at website buymyface.co.uk.

Ed added: “We’re picking up a following and getting a lot of website visitors and that way advertisers want to be a part of this.

“It’s as serious a business as face painting gets. The original plan was to paint our faces for the year, it would be the two of us and we wouldn’t go past that.

“But we’ve had people all over the world wanting to do it so maybe we can branch out and get other people doing it. It’s crazy when people like Ernst and Young want to do it.”

Their success has gained them national media attention and the website is now being regionalised so people logging on see adverts relevant to where they are.