In a country that throws up more than its fair share of production and creative challenges, McCann Erickson Milan has attempted to stray from the norm on both of those commercial fronts.

The shop's TV production department is structured, in some senses, along North American lines, with a head of production, Lorella Stortini, leading a six-person production staff. As a result, the agency undertakes its own research and spearheads more of the production process than is usual in Italy, where production companies often serve the function of an agency production department.

"We often like to find our own ideas regarding directors," says associate creative director Stefano Colombo. "When we have a clear idea of the type of commercial we want, directors we'd like to use, the look we want, especially when we are working with a foreign director, we try to do it on our own." Colombo says the agency will deal through an Italian company for an Italian director, or if a project is for a large client who demands at least three bids from production companies.

While the agency's production resources allow some latitude on that side of the equation, branching out creatively is still a challenge, says Colombo. The agency handles big accounts like Loréal, Opel, Nestlé and Unilever, for which it produces pan-European TV creative and for which it can take up to a year to get a spot through idea, testing and on the air, says Colombo. But the agency has managed to get some gems on its reel and break from the product- or booty-centric approach that pervades Italian advertising. (One Italian producer summed it up nicely: "There are some good ads in Italy but it's usually regarding nice women, usually without the pants, or this kind of thing...").

A spot for Banca Centoventuno's Internet banking offering, iam.it, tackles nothing less than the full existential bucket of clams. Using a low-budget security-cam look, the ad features a man attempting to enter a building through an automatic sliding door. While the door is activated for several others, it remains stubbornly closed as our protagonist stands before it. The end line lobs this conundrum: "You say you exist. Have you any proof?" The spot was directed by the team of Bosi and Sironi out of BRW Films and devised as a teaser to drive viewers to the iam.it site. Selling such subtlety to a client was no mean feat, says Colombo. "It's not exactly the approach clients like around here," he says. "They usually want more assurances, more straightforward thinking and product benefits coming through."

A campaign for Bertolli olive oil, directed by Pietro Follini out of Mercurio Productions, presents an oil-packing James Bond type, Bert, who rescues comely house mistresses with Bertolli-based solutions to their culinary quandaries. The spots combine freeze-frame crime caper techniques à la Snatch, with lines like "I've come about the lamb." And though each of the lush ladies inevitably hints that she'd like Bert to stay for further oiling, he takes to the road with exit lines like: "There's a problem prawn waiting for me."

Another campaign, for Panasonic, features some also-oily lotharios draping their delicious selves over different kinds of audio and visual electronics, with the set festooned with gold lions (the kind found on your neighbor's lawn, not in Cannes), Venus statues and billowing curtains. Michele Nocchi out of BRW directed the campaign. McCann worked with South African director Laurens van Rensberg (repped by BRW in Italy) on an Aqua Lilia spot that features a teenage tennis player being summarily whooped by an unseen opponent. The latter is soon revealed to be a sprightly senior fuelled by the bottled water in question.