The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have banned Lufthansa’s latest ad campaign as it deems that the airline’s newest campaign presents a ‘misleading impression of its environmental impact.’
This latest Lufthansa campaign features an image of one of the airline’s plane alongside a picture of the earth, with a strap-line that reads “Connecting the world. Protecting its future.”
The ASA claimed that this advertising campaign would present to consumers that Lufthansa has already undergone ‘significant mitigating steps” to improve the environmental impact of the airline.
Whereas Lufthansa claimed that this advertising campaign was “open to interpretation” and based on the airline’s aspirations for the future.
Lufthansa further emphasised how the airline aims to become carbon neutral by 2050, and half the airline’s carbon emissions by 2030. Lufthansa claimed that the ad campaign was a method of addressing the need to reduce the environmental impact of flying rather than an “absolute promise” that their current aircrafts do not cause harm.
In response to these claims, the ASA stated, “Many of these initiatives [are] targeted to deliver results only years or decades into the future. We also understood that there were currently no environmental initiatives or commercially viable technologies in the aviation industry which would substantiate the absolute green claim ‘protecting its future’, as we considered consumers would interpret it.”
Miles Lockwood, ASA’S director of complaints and investigations further commented that “Climate change and the environment is the key and enduring issue of our age. Advertisers in high carbon emitting sectors shouldn’t make claims that give consumers a misleading impression about their green credentials and plans or which they can’t substantiate with robust evidence.”
