The main promo for Ten's forthcoming reality series The Renovators is slick and appealing, but is it also a piece of subliminal advertising that could be in breach of the broadcasting rules?
With its Stomp-like soundtrack and its bold yellow-and-black colour scheme, the promo is hard to miss. A little harder to spot, though, is the moment 28 seconds into the 60-second spot when the interplay of yellow and black on a light switch produces what appears to be a fair approximation of the Commonwealth Bank logo.
A mere coincidence, says Ten. ''There's no logo in it, it wasn't filmed with a logo on set, there's absolutely no logo in there,'' said a network spokeswoman yesterday.
The colour scheme had nothing to do with the bank, she added. ''Yellow and black are the colours that were used when we launched the program last year, and black, yellow and blue are the network's colours - we use black and yellow together and we use blue and white together.''
Ten insists that when the program was launched last October, no sponsorship deals were in place. However, this week it released a list of eight sponsors involved in the program, including Commonwealth Bank. The others were Bunnings, LG, Taubmans, Freedom, Ford, KFC and Yellow Pages.
Network Ten's national sales manager, Kylie Rogers, said in a statement this week that advertiser interest in The Renovators was ''in a class of its own''. She added that the number of clients looking to showcase their brands through the show was ''simply unprecedented''.
Ten said principal sponsors would be able to ''leverage their association with the show through a combination of in-show segments featuring products and services, themed television commercials, tailor-made play-in and play-out segments between commercial breaks, commercial billboards and branded content on the show's official website''.
Any attempt to leverage that association through subliminal advertising would, however, be in breach of the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice. Under paragraph 1.9.7 of the code, ''a licencee may not broadcast a program, program promotion, station identification or community service announcement which is likely … to … use or involve any technique that attempts to convey information to the viewer by transmitting messages below or near the threshold of normal awareness''.
In 2008, Ten was found guilty of breaching the broadcasting code of practice after subliminal messages were included in the 2007 ARIA awards broadcast.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority said yesterday it would investigate allegations of subliminal advertising only if a viewer complained to the station and failed to reach a satisfactory resolution.