Proactive Investors - An advertising campaign by the German airline Lufthansa claiming that its green initiatives are protecting the world has been banned by the UK advertising watchdog, which ruled it was misleading consumers over the environmental impact of flying.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) launched an investigation into the campaign which featured an image of the front of a plane in flight.
The underside of the plane was represented by an image of the earth from space. The ad included text which stated, “Lufthansa Group. Connecting the world. Protecting its future.”
The ASA was concerned this was giving consumers a “misleading impression of its environmental impact”.
Lufthansa said the tag line was “open to interpretation” and consumers would not see it as an “absolute promise” relating to the environment or that its planes did not cause harm.
But the ASA said the claim “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 was superimposed on a picture of the globe.
“We considered the claim was likely to be understood by consumers to mean that Lufthansa had already taken significant mitigating steps to ensure that the net environmental impact of their business was not harmful,” the ASA said in a statement.
The ASA banned the ad campaign, telling Lufthansa to make future environmental claims clearer.