Students learn how to get ahead in advertising

Students are being given the chance to earn some extra cash by renting out their foreheads for advertising.

Students are being given the chance to earn some extra cash by renting out their foreheads for advertising.

The scheme is set to get under way with a group of students in Manchester, which will see them stick a large logo on their foreheads.

Dreamt up by Cunning Stunts, the advertising agency responsible for projecting the image of Gail Porter on to the House of Parliament, students will be paid for the time they spend out and about, when the logos are in public view.

Students will be paid the minimum wage for the estimated four hours a day that they are out in public. Two of the agency's clients, FHM, the men's magazine, and CNX, a pay-TV channel, have agreed to go ahead and it is in negotiation with a major global advertiser.

Rufus Curnow, a 22-year-old maths student at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, was one of the first to sign up for the scheme. "Student debt is getting ridiculous. In my final year I have no time to get a part-time job," he said. I think there are also a lot of lazy students who would look at this as a way of earning £100 a week for doing nothing."

Cunning Stunts said it would only work in universities where the authorities and local students' union agree to the scheme. Oxford and Leeds have both cleared the scheme.

The logos are colour transfers that last a week. The agency is also looking into vegetable dyes and, if this advertising medium takes off, it could put facilities at campuses where students can go to get their logos "topped up" every day. Cunning Stunts is initially looking to sign up a thousand students nationwide.

Anna Carloss, the managing director of Cunning Stunts, said: "The papers were full of stories about student debt and we have a lot of new graduates here. This got us thinking and came up with this idea. It doesn't interfere with studies."

Cunning Stunts said it had no plans to extend the scheme to other parts of the body.