Website comes under fire for 'offensive' homeless advertising campaign

A careers website has come under fire for its "crass" advertising campaign, after mocked-up homeless 'beds' appeared on pavements across London.

The visual marketing stunt, by City Calling, features cardboard signs saying "Found A Job" and bearing the company's logo, placed on top of blankets beside shoes and dog bowls.

Since the pavement adverts appeared, dozens of people have complained to the company, branding the stunt "crass", "offensive", and "ignorant".

Posting on the company's Facebook page, Clare Emmett said: "Those Found a Job pavement ads: dear, dear. Are you being wilfully crass in a desperate attempt to appear "edgy", or are you simply too obtuse to appreciate the unflattering light they cast on your company?"

While Concepta Cassar posted: "Your so-called advertising "campaign" is among the most crass things to feature in visual imagery; to rob the most vulnerable people in society of whatever modicum of dignity they manage to cling to in the face of such hardship by using their plight as an object of supposedly comedic derision is obscene.

"Who exactly had your "creatives" hoped to target as a target audience from this base and basic set of images?

"Unless it is part of your CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] policy to actively help these people, and your HR policy to seek to train and employ them, then this is nothing but crass exploitation of the poor. Shame on you."

The campaign has been criticised as being insensitive to the 7,581 people who, according to homelessness charity Crisis, slept rough at some point during 2014/15 - a 16 per cent rise on the previous year, and more than double the figure of 3,673 five years before.

The publicity drive has also been condemned for failing to understand the complexity of issues relating to homelessness.

Taking to Facebook, Almande Maudlin said: "Just seen your new street marketing strategy featuring fake homeless beds. How many jobs are out there for people with no fixed abode, no new clothes and a heroin addiction? Terrible, terrible marketing."