There are scores of ways of getting your business noticed cheaply and easily by making use of the city’s streets. Unfortunately, though, many of them such as flyposting or graffiti are downright illegal, whereas others (a nod goes out here to Manchester’s “Sabi Rock guy”) make you look like a nutter.

Yet Birmingham-based businessman Kris Jeffrey, who has “run a couple of businesses” alongside full-time jobs in sales and recruitment, reckons he has found a method of getting brands noticed without getting his collar felt. His firm, Street Advertising Services, operates machines that use a template with a mix of pressure and steam to deep-cleanse areas of otherwise grimy pavements. The cleaned area then stands out and forms a temporary advertisement which wears away after a month or so.

“I didn’t want to do anything illegal. I’d experimented with some cleaning chemicals, but I didn’t want to do anything that could cause permanent damage,” he explains.

Jeffrey started his business in July last year and now has two teams of operators using machines that cost around £30k apiece. He will charge clients £1,000 for a two-man team to go out and place around 20 advertisements on pavements in major city centres like Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh or London.

“They’re particularly good for online businesses, and we’ve just finished a campaign for classified ads site Gumtree. But we’ve had everyone using them from The Football Academy to local restaurants,” he says.

He admits that the business “probably won’t make me a fortune” but as a service that actually cleans rather than damages surfaces it means he doesn’t need to seek approval or licences. “We don’t give any prior notice that we’re going to turn up and as far as we can see we’re not contravenening any laws or byelaws,” he says. “We don’t want to be seen as irresponsible operators – we take health and safety training seriously, for example. So if local councils don’t like what we’ve done then we’ll remove the ads as soon as the campaign finishes.”

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