The UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has just banned a Lufthansa advertisement in the UK as it deems it misleading consumers. The ad was intended to showcase Lufthansa's commitment to sustainability. However, the ASA has interpreted the ad as saying that Lufthansa is a green, eco-friendly business. The ASA claims that the airline is not a green company due to its high carbon emissions output.

Canceled advertisement

The advertisement that has the ASA up in arms is a single image. The image features a circle at its center. The top half of the circle is filled in with a picture of the top half of an airliner. The bottom half is filled in with half of the globe. Written across the circle are the words "Connecting the World. Protecting its future."

According to The Guardian, when the image was released, the ASA was concerned that the airline was misleading the public. These concerns led it to investigate the airline's advertising campaign and determine that it was not protecting the world's future. The authority addressed that Lufthansa is working to reduce carbon emissions but will take decades to become a truly green company. A representative for the authority 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."

The advertisement has been banned in the UK, and the ASA has advised Lufthansa to avoid making false claims about its environmental impact. The Director of Complaints and Investigations at the ASA, Miles Lockwood, shared that large companies producing high levels of carbon emissions should not advertise themselves as green companies. Lockwood stated,

"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."

Airline rebuttal

Lufthansa has since addressed the ASA, stating that the advertisement was open to interpretation and did not make any specific promises regarding its carbon emissions output to consumers. It claims the ad was meant to help raise awareness about the need for sustainable aviation and how the airline works to achieve this. The advertisement even featured a link that viewers could follow, which would take them to its Make Change Fly website, which helps raise awareness about the need and methods of creating sustainable aviation.

The airline also told the ASA that the environmental claims made in the advertisement primarily refer to its short-term goal of cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030 and its long-term goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. Regardless of the airline's rebuttal, the ASA has stuck to its decision and informed Lufthansa that it would need to take further carbon emission mitigation steps before it is allowed to make similar claims through advertisements in the UK again.