June 10, 2019

Welcome to our May 2019 edition of the WFA Global Policy Brief

This monthly newsletter aims to keep WFA members on top of the biggest policy issues facing brand marketers today at a global level. This month we look at a pledge between governments and digital platforms to tackle extremist content online, new privacy amendments in Singapore, and the potential for new standards on advertising to children from the International Organization for Standardization. We hope you find it useful. Please send any feedback you might have to WFAGlobalPolicyBrief@wfanet.org

WFA supports “Christchurch Call to Action”

WFA welcomes the announcement from the G7 summit in Paris this May that governments and digital platforms will commit to the “Christchurch Call to Action”. Prompted by the Christchurch mosque attacks in March, which killed 51 people and was livestreamed on Facebook, the pledge is a non-binding initiative encouraging countries and digital platforms to work harder to eliminate extremist content online.

WFA’s support for the pledge echoes our call-to-action made during Global Marketer Week in Lisbon in March, calling on our members to hold digital platforms to account in light of increasing brand safety concerns and Platforms’ recent failures to block dangerous content.

WFA, along with the Association of New Zealand Advertisers (ANZA), will be following the development of this pledge. For more information, please reach out to Catherine Armitage c.armitage@wfanet.org

Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) has launched a public consultation on two proposed provisions that would be added to Singapore’s Data Protection Act 2012 (PDPA).

The first would be a Data Portability Provision, obliging organizations to provide a user’s data to another organization at the request of the user. The provision would only apply to firms with a presence in Singapore. “Derived data”, i.e. new data created through processing of existing data, would be exempt.

The second, a Data Innovation Provision would permit the use of personal data by organisations for the purpose of innovation without having to provide users with consent notifications (as long as the data has been collected in a manner compliant with the data protection act). Innovation purposes include operational efficiency and service improvements, product and service development, and knowing customers better. Collection and disclosure for these purposes would still require consent. The consent exemption would not extend to the use of data for sending direct marketing messages to users. Derived data would not be subject to access, correction, or data portability obligations. We will be discussing the future of data protection in Singapore and what it means for advertisers at our next Digital Governance Exchange meeting in Singapore on June 13. For more information please contact Max Schmidt m.schmidt@wfanet.org.

Save the date – upcoming policy events in 2019
June 13 – Digital Governance Exchange (Singapore) 
July 10  – Responsible Advertising and Children (Washington DC)

 

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) considers setting standards for advertising to kids

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Committee on Consumer Policy (COPOLCO) has recently received a new work stream proposal to develop standards on advertising and marketing that affect children.

The ISO sets proprietary, industrial and commercial standards, and their competency has not traditionally extended to the area of advertising, where the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) is referred to as the global standard-setting body.

While no final decision has yet been made on whether or not the ISO will pursue this work, the ICC, along with the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA) and the International Council for Ad Self-Regulation (ICAS) have raised concerns that new standards in this area would create confusion and overlap with the ICC code and national self-regulatory advertising standards, a view which WFA supports.

The ISO will be holding further discussions to determine whether new standards are needed, and what their scope should be. This topic, and much more, will be on the agenda of our next Responsible Advertising and Children meeting in Washington DC on July 10. For more information please contact Rebecka Allén at r.allen@wfanet.org.

WFA has moved! 
As of this week our Brussels office is now just down the road at:
140 Avenue Louise
7th floor

1050 Brussels
Belgium
Our telephone number will remain as +32 (2) 502 57 40.
We look forward to welcoming you to our new office!

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