The Advertis
The Advertising Standards Authority in the UK has banned a Lufthansa ad made after ruling it made misleading claims about the airline's efforts to protect the environment.
The ASA said the ad, which the carrier conceded was "ambiguous", was "likely to be interpreted by consumers as an environmental reference to how Lufthansa's approach to aviation was protecting the future of the world".
The ad featured an image of the front of a plane in flight, with the underside of the plane represented by an image of the earth from space. The text read "LUFTHANSA GROUP. CONNECTING THE WORLD. PROTECTING ITS FUTURE. #MakeChangeFly”.
The ASA said Lufthansa told it that the wording was not intended to taken "as an absolute promise about their service, especially one linked to the environment, that their services caused no harm to the environment" but was aimed at making consumers aware of "the need to reduce the impact of flying on the environment and making consumers aware, chiefly via the website, of how Lufthansa were achieving that".
But it ruled that Lufthansa’s claim about 'PROTECTING ITS FUTURE' was "likely to be interpreted by consumers as an environmental reference to how Lufthansa's approach to aviation was protecting the future of the world, given that this text appeared immediately after the text 'CONNECTING THE WORLD 'and was superimposed on a picture of the globe".
The ASA said "absolute environmental claims" need to be backed up "by a high level of substantiation".
Lufthansa has said it aims to be flying emissions-free by 2050 and recently launched a scheme across airlines in the Lufthansa Group, by which passengers can pay extra for "green fares".