Emerging Concerns: Holidays abroad ads
At Badvertising, we call for an end to advertising fuelling the climate emergency. In our targeted categories of ‘high-carbon adverts’, we include fossil fuel companies, car manufacturers, airlines and airports. While these companies in particular are explicitly promoting the use of fossil fuels, and therefore need to be targeted in an initial ban on ‘high-carbon ads’, we do not believe that this is a comprehensive list of adverts fueling the climate crisis. The urgency of tackling the climate emergency requires us to broaden our focus and include emerging trends within advertising.
For example, advertising for red meat drives up sales of these products, indirectly driving global heating and ecological degradation. Other examples of adverts that harm people and planet include holidays abroad, fast fashion, and the false solutions promoted by companies resisting structural change, such as hydrogen boilers and carbon capture and storage (CCS).
With this series New Emerging concerns in high-carbon advertising, we aim to shine a light on categories of adverts that should be prohibited for the same reasons as adverts for fossil fuel firms, airlines and carmakers.
In the first instalment of the series, we shine a light on adverts for holidays abroad, with examples spotted by the Badvertising team at several railway stations throughout the UK.
Railway networks promoting holidays abroad
Promoting adverts for unsustainable alternatives to rail at railways stations makes absolutely no sense - however ads for SUV vehicles to package holidays with Jet2 are currently all too common across Network Rail (UK). Our own research also warns that current efforts from rail companies, like Network Rail’s We Mean Green campaign, encouraging people to travel by train will remain vain as long as these are drowned out by opposite messages promoting high-carbon forms of transport.
Picture 1: Birming New Street Station - Network Rail. August 2022.
Picture 2: Norwood Junction - Network Rail. November 2022
Badvertising further investigated the extent of high-carbon advertising at UK public rail authorities in a series of Freedom of Information (FoI) requests toNetwork Rail and Transport for London (TfL). We asked what revenues these bodies are generating from advertising in general and more specifically from high-carbon adverts and cars. Although Network Rail doesn’t hold the data we were looking after, the information we received from TfL was very interesting.
The list of advertisers we received from TfL interestingly matches quite closely with our own empirical observations that a great deal of adverts promoted at railway stations are for unsustainable forms of transport.
Furthermore, holidays abroad were among the largest share of adverts in the Motor and Travel & Transport categories, with 36 out of the full list of 148 companies advertising on TfL network in 2018-2019.
These include country-specific tourism boards like those adverts for tourism in Jordan (see picture 3) and Barbados (see picture 4), as well as package holiday companies. While these adverts are not always explicitly promoting the use of flights, it is often the case that air travel is unavoidable given that the destinations advertised are only easily accessible by plane. However, more often than not, these companies offer full holiday packages that include flight, accommodation and so forth.
Picture 3: East Croydon Station - Network Rail/TfL. November 2022
Picture 4: London Bridge station - Network Rail. November 2022
Calling for rail authorities to ditch unsustainable ads
In November 2022, we wrote to both Network Rail and TfL asking them to remove adverts for high-carbon travel in particular in order to avoid contradictory messages and align with their policy objectives of promoting a modal shift from road to rail. We backed our demands with new supporting evidence and stressed that both authorities' existing codes of acceptance for advertising already contain sufficient grounds to preclude them from carrying adverts for high-carbon travel. Specifically, Network Rail and TfL’s advertising policies detail that they shall not authorise adverts found to be harming their commercial interests. Our research and recent analysis clearly illustrates that when railway authorities host advertising for high-carbon travel, this harms their commercial interests.
If adverts promoting faraway travel destinations and mass tourism have no place in a climate emergency, their presence at public railway stations is even more inappropriate. It’s time public transport authorities stop being complicit in promoting unsustainable travel by offering those companies a billboard for their harmful advertising.