TV advertising - goes multi-racial

Is it just me or have the great majority of TV commercials just got to show at some point in the advertisement, either a mixed race couple - usually for furniture adverts -DFS being a major culprit here or if its for an advert that requires showing the British public buying it sometimes up 50% of the 'British public' shown are non-White?
Having looked at the Television Advertising Control guidelines I suspected it might be a PC proviso, but it is not. The TAC make no reference to showing a multi-racial selection in advertising. So I went and looked at the self-regulatory body, the Advertising Standards Agency and there too no definite instruction to feature mixed-race couples.
I did notice on my searches that two countries - Australia and Malaysia DO have a set requirement that advertisers show the racial diversity of their products or services.

That leaves us then with the companies themselves or rather the advertising agencies they use.
So I came across the website for the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) and found THIS:-

"In 2003 the IPA launched an online guide to ethnic diversity in the UK as part of a self-declared ethnic diversity week for the ad industry. The guide was the culmination of a two-year project by the IPA Ethnic Diversity Group, then co-chaired by Ray Barrett (Creative Director of Barrett Cernis) and Jonathan Mildenhall (Managing Director of TBWA) and looked at the portrayal and employment of ethnic minorities in advertising.The project communicated three significant findings:

• That advertisers need to wake up to the opportunities of the 'brown pound' (an economic view)

• BT got it right in portraying ethnic minorities in ads (a portrayal view)

• The ad industry must sell itself harder to attract more ethnic minority employees (an employment view)

The report also highlighted:

• 7.9% of the UK population is of ethnic minority origin, in London this rises to 31%; (this is of course higher now in 2013 -Editor)

• The combined disposable wealth of this group is estimated at some £32billion;

• Only 4% of IPA agency employees are of ethnic origin;

• Of this 4%, 70% are in support disciplines such as IT and finance;"

Now the IPA are a self-regulatory body and in 2003 they started an Ethnic Diversity Committee. They have special guidelines and booklets encouraging both advertising agencies and consultants - and of course money (which rather hypocritically refer top as "the Brown pound" - isn't that very patronising by the way?) talks - and with the likes of Saatchi and Saatchi (good old British names) being one of the front runners, the answer is YES. There is a clear campaign by the Advertising industry to become part of the Racial Diversity bandwagon. 

So now, I - and you -know! 

 The infamous "United Colours of Benniton" advertisement