MediaTel

Students wishing to ease the pressure of mounting debts are being urged to use their heads as billboards to advertise brands such as FHM.

Creative marketing agency, Cunning Stunts, which is best known for projecting Gail Porter's bottom onto the Houses Of Parliament, is offering students a fee of £88 pounds a week to use their foreheads as advertising space.

Nial Ferguson, group marketing manager at FHM, commented: "We are constantly looking for new and impactful ways to communicate to men. If we can do this and pay for the next round at the union bar at the same time, then it seems like a good idea to us."

Youth pay-TV channel, CNX, has also signed up to the new initiative and Richard Kilggariff, head of the channel, added: "We want to hit our viewers right between the eyes so what better place to place an ad than on their foreheads."

Although some students will be unwilling to see their faces temporarily disfigured by a semi-permanent transfer, others have no qualms about becoming walking adverts. Oli Merrrel, a design student at Falmouth College of Arts, commented: "Advertising is everywhere you look, you can't get away from it. I don't see the difference between an advert on a billboard and an advert on my forehead, except that I'll be earning money from it being there."

Cunning Stunts views the initiative as a creative way for students to alleviate their cash-flow problems. According to John Carver, director of the company: "A number of our employees have recently left university and these massive student debts are a real yoke for them. This initiative gives brands a unique advertising medium as well as giving something back to students."

It seems that there is virtually no limit to the lengths that advertisers will go to in order to stand out in the increasingly crowded media marketplace. Dogs recently became walking billboards, when ambient ad group, Dogvertise, launched its first pan-European campaign to promote the new Sony Ericsson T300 mobile phone on specially designed dog coats (see Advertising Goes To The Dogs With New Campaign).

Cunning Stunts: 0207 691 0077 www.cunningstunts.net

Recent Outdoor Stories from NewsLine Outdoor Revenue Rises By 15% During Quarter Four 2002 JCDecaux Promotes New UIP Movie With Sonic Bus Shelters Adshel To Quantify Campaign Creative For Clients

Subscribers can access ten years of NewsLine articles by clicking the Search button to the left