Wednesday, 3 March 2010

Ryanair protests easyJet ad

Comparative advertising can be tricky and sometimes invites challenges from rivals who feel their positions have been misrepresented. Here's a case in point.

Ryanair filed a protest with the Advertising Standards Authority over this ad, saying it's misleading.

EasyJet wanted to make one point with the advert: It flies directly to primary airports. However, Ryanair often flies to secondary airports that may be further away from a passenger's city destination.

In this case, the ASA agreed with Ryanair that the easyJet ad was misleading, and issued the following explanation:
We considered the challenging tone of the headline "Who loves flying you to the place you actually booked?" combined with the implication that Ryanair misled customers and flew them to airports different to the ones to which they had booked was denigratory.