​Updated: More new appointments to Ad Standards

Two new non-executive directors have been appointed to the Board of Ad Standards, effective immediately.

This follows yesterday's four new appointments to the Community Panel.

Kirsty Muddle and Jenni Dill will contribute to the governance of Australia’s independent advertising complaints adjudicator.

Muddle is the managing director and one of the founding partners of Cummins&Partners, and has championed programs that encourage cultural and socioeconomic diversity in the advertising industry. She is also a company director and board member of Cummins&Partners.

Dill is a commercially-driven marketing leader with over 25 years’ experience across marketing, innovation and sales in Australia and internationally. Currently, she is CMO of McDonald’s Australia.

The four other appointments to the Ad Standards Community Panel aim to further strengthen the ability of Australia’s independent system of advertising complaints adjudication to reflect community standards.

The Community Panel is responsible for considering complaints made by members of the public about advertisements across all mediums and represents the wide cross-section of community opinion. The panel considers complaints across wide-ranging social issues covered by the advertising codes and initiatives administered by Ad Standards - from discrimination and exploitation, to the environment, body image and health, and ads targeted to kids.

The university student, police officer, doctor, and anti-discrimination lawyer and former journalist selected bring a range of life experience and perspectives reflecting Ad Standards commitment to representing Australia’s diversity, the company stated. The Community Panel as a whole does not include representatives from the advertising industry, or from consumer or lobby groups.

The new recruits include Michael Bonning, who was previously a medical officer in the Royal Australian Navy and is currently chief medical officer at an adventure travel company raising money for charities. Sam Drummond is a practicing equality lawyer and radio journalist with experience in federal politics, Robb Wann a former police officer with the Queensland Police and capability officer and advisor, and Wolf Zimmermann is a scientific computing specialist who is about to take up a new role as systems adviser to the Department of Health and Human Services in Victoria.

Ad Standards CEO, Fiona Jolly, said the latest appointments represent a broad range of community values, ages, skills, geographic and demographic groups.

“Ensuring the Community Panel as a whole reflects a wide variety of Australians and is broadly representative of the diversity of the Australian community is our top focus,” she said. “The diversity helps with understanding the many different community standards relative to decisions that need to be made by the Community Panel.”

The incoming members were selected following public advertisement. Membership is on a fixed-term basis with new appointments staggered to ensure a mix of corporate knowledge while introducing people with a mix of experience, views and skills.

Ad Standards launched a campaign earlier in the year aimed at drawing attention to the advertising standards codes, with the goal to encourage progressive advertising and recognise ads hitting the mark.

Ad Standards used the advertising campaign to raise the public’s awareness of the wide range of social issues the ad codes cover. By using headlines such as ‘This ad is brainwashing your children’, ‘This ad is for white people only’, ‘This ad is not an ad’ and ‘If you’re a woman, don’t bother reading this ad’, the industry body wants to make a point about the ability of advertisers and agencies to have more socially progressive messaging in their ads.

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