TV and web convergence will see more creative innovation; the digital arena is starting to interest mainstream ad creatives. (Spotlight on: web creativity).(Brief Article)(Editorial)

It is notoriously hard to get mainstream advertising creatives interested in anything digital. It's not just the gratuitous jargon and the militant technophilia they find when they venture down this particular corridor--although, heaven knows, that can put anyone off.

Surely it's down to something scarier than that. Perhaps the realisation that the odds of creating interesting work in the digital domain are depressingly low. Who in their right mind would want to wrestle with the problems of creating poster executions within postage stamp formats? Or, if they absolutely insist on moving pictures of some kind, have to choose between childish Torn and Jerry-style animated graphics or Edwardian-era moving pictures that are flickery and jumpy.

But we may have witnessed something of a breakthrough the other week in Brighton. During a D&AD judging session, the assembled talent came across the BMWfilms.com work, which had been entered in the TV category. The BMWfilms website features five mini-movies directed by the top filmmakers John Franken-heimer, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-Wai, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Guy Ritchie.

In the films the BMW product is thrown about in ways that would make seasoned members of the BACC committee blanche.

The D&AD judges had sort of heard of this stuff, but they'd comfortably managed to dismiss it because it was accessible only on the web. It didn't really count. But what they were seeing now was evidence that the work had life beyond the web--on web-TV, for instance, and video on demand. Or even, in this case, the cinema. So maybe, the lines between the web and TV really are blurring--and this work might be the way to make the most of that creatively.

Some of the judges left the session convinced they'd seen the future. After all, they'd heard the theory that in an era of a zillion digital TV channels backed by interactive domains, advertisers would become programme makers. They'd soon be doing everything from infomercials to "brandcasting".

Marcus Vinton, the founder of the interactive TV specialist Spring, was one of the D&AD judges who was already up to speed on this work -- and he was heartened by the reactions it received. He states: "For the past 15 years, BMW iconography has been part of advertising's lesson number one, so it was a bit of a shock for some to see how they played with that within films of up to 15 minutes long. Culturally it was hard for some to adjust to. They knew it wasn't a movie nor was it a commercial. It was a brand in action--advertainment, brand-casting -- and it was great to see their reactions."