World: Insider's View - Italy.

Is there hope for the creativity in the Italian ad industry? Not a lot, Alasdhair Macgregor says, unless agencies can overcome their insecurity and stand up to clients.

Alongside the Holy Grail, the unicorn and outstanding account handlers, award-winning Italian ads are hard to find. Very. But why?

Italy holds 60 per cent of the world's art treasures, is the home of fashion, the centre of industrial design, the cradle of typography. So why can't we produce ads of the same standard?

The answer is to be found in the Italian psyche. Italy has only existed for 130 years. It has been invaded, torn apart and dominated by all and sundry. This has given Italians a strong sense of self-preservation, often labelled cowardice. And Italy is the home of Catholicism, where guilt and forgiveness go hand in hand. Therefore, Italians suffer from a massive insecurity complex.

In advertising, where opinions are more important than facts, there is a tendency to see the other's point of view too often - the other being the client. Accepting compromise leads to lack of respect, which allows the client to have the upper hand.

It's not as if brains in Italy are less original. Italians won last year's Young Creatives competition in Cannes, for example, or remember the Peugeot 206 'sculptor' ad.

Yet something happens between the ideas stage and the production. The backbone of Italian industry is small- to medium-sized companies, usually run by one person. Strong, autocratic personalities go into meetings ...