A newspaper ad promoting British-made mattresses that warned of “nasty imports” alongside an image of a surgical mask has been banned by the advertising watchdog for associating immigrants with the spread of the coronavirus.

North London-based Vic Smith Beds ran an ad in a local paper featuring a cartoon image of an upright mattress with a Union Jack on the front wearing a green surgical mask.

The ad, which ran in the Enfield and Haringey Independent last month, featured text which said “British build [sic] beds proudly made in the UK. No nasty imports”.

The Advertising Standards Authority received two complaints that the ad was likely to cause serious offence by linking concern about the ongoing coronavirus health emergency to nationality and race.

Vic Smith Beds said it had not intended to cause offence and that its customer base was a multi-ethnic mix, so it would not have made sense to offend its customers. The company said it had “run the ad past” its multicultural workforce “without any issues being raised”.

The company told the ASA that its beds had been made in the UK “rather than sitting in a damp container sent from China”. The image of the mask was meant to refer to the mould spores that could develop in those conditions and the smells given off from chemicals from damp rolled mattresses.

The ASA said that the ad ran against a backdrop of news reports of some groups, particularly Asian, being physically and verbally abused for wearing face masks.

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The watchdog said that while the aim of the ad was to draw attention to the fact that the beds were UK-made, the use of the phrase “no nasty imports” and the image of the surgical mask was “likely to be taken as a reference to the coronavirus outbreak”.

“We considered that in combination with the image, the reference to ‘nasty imports’ was likely to be read as a negative reference to immigration or race, and in particular as associating immigrants with disease,” the ASA said. “We therefore concluded that the ad was likely to cause serious and widespread offence.” The ASA said the ad, which breached advertising rules relating to harm and offence, must not appear again.

Last week, the ASA banned a series of “alarmist” and “scaremongering” ads for face masks that it said played on people’s fears over the coronavirus outbreak.