Lufthansa has had a poster advertisement banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for making an unsubstantiated claim about the airline’s environmental impact.
The poster image featured an image of a plane in flight, with the underside of the plane represented by an image of the earth from space. The ad included the text: “Lufthansa Group. Connecting the world. Protecting its future. #MakeChangeFly.”
The ASA challenged whether the ad gave a misleading impression of the advertiser’s environmental impact.
Lufthansa responded to the advertising watchdog’s enquiries by stating that the ad contained a clear hyperlink to the website ‘www.makechangefly.com’, which formed part of the wider “#MakeChangeFly” campaign. The company believed that the website – which outlined Lufthansa’s work to reduce CO2 emissions – provided context and substantiation for the ad.
The airline also said that in conjunction with the earth imagery, the tagline “Connecting the world – Protecting its future” would not be understood as an absolute promise about their service, “especially one linked to the environment”. Lufthansa believed the imagery of the plane and globe presented the tagline as a “potential dichotomy”.
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Nevertheless, the ASA found that the basis of the environmentally friendly claim had not been made clear and it had not been adequately substantiated. Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) code requires that absolute environmental claims must be supported by a “high level of substantiation”.
“We told Deutsche Lufthansa to ensure that the basis of future environmental claims was made clear and did not give a misleading impression of the impact caused by travelling with the airline and that robust substantiation was held to support them,” the ad authority added.
