Hasta La Creative!

While advertisers including Coca-Cola, General Motors and Cheerios last year promoting diversity in their Super Bowl spots, this time around at least three major marketers will celebrate what it means to be a father.

Nissan, Dove and Toyota are tapping both famous and regular dads in a series of vignettes, online videos and social media campaigns leading up to their Super Bowl XLIX ads, all to show the caring side of men, the choices they make for their families and the everyday moments between children and their fathers.

The brands are looking to tap into the escalating conversation surrounding the role of fathers in the household and re-make the image of masculinity in media.

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(TrendHunter.com) There is a fascinating interplay of material, form and color in these composite console tables, expressing decidedly contemporary designs. Fusing the rustic with the industrial, designer Maximo…

UK magazine Directory claims that its yearly ad rankings have “a genuinely global reach,” and that’s especially true for this year’s winners.

While the US easily beats the UK and Brazil in the “top country for creativity” category (with Sweden coming in at #16), the individuals and agencies named are overwhelmingly European.

BBDO New York, for example, is the only American agency on the top shops list, though Wieden+Kennedy New York (not Portland) scored “No.1 for TV and Film” and Droga5 won the “Best Integrated” category.

BBDO is also the only American agency named in “Top CCOs”: David Lubars tied with Leo Burnett Sao Paulo’s Marcelo Reis for the number one spot while Greg Han placed eighth. Ronald Ng, who joined DigitasLBi in New York earlier this month, made the list for his 2013-2014 work with BBDO’s Singapore office.

In an additional snub, the lists for top ECDs, top art directors and top copywriters include no Americans at all.

Are stateside agencies lagging, or does Directory have a very-slight-but-detectable pro-Euro bias?

If you’ve ever seen late-night mastermind Conan O’Brien venture into the real world and interact with the commoners, you know you’re in for a treat whenever it happens.

Turns out the head of Conan’s I.T. department, Chris Hayes, is a Taco Bell superfan, eating it at least three times a week. As Conan is a benevolent boss, he decides to make Mr. Hayes’ dream come true and take him to Taco Bell headquarters in Irvine, Calif.

We get an interesting glimpse behind the tortilla curtain, where we see how the magic happens. But more important, comedy ensues as Conan and Hayes rollick through the chalupa palace, interacting with food taste testers, trying new creations in the “Innovation Kitchen” as well as inventing new ones like Conan’s Irish-inspired concoction, “The O’Taco.”

It’s not all flattering to the brand, but it ends up putting the chain in a good light just because it’s so entertainingly honest. So, sit back and enjoy this hilarious tour of Taco Bell HQ, with your guide, Conan O’Brien.

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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article said The Sun had stopped running photos of topless women in print. The Sun will continue to run topless photos in print after all.

Readers of Britain’s best-selling tabloid, The Sun, seemed this week to have stopped running pictures of topless women on page 3, a staple of the U.K. press since 1970.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper began showing “Page 3 Girls” as a way to court blue-collar workers, but its days have seemed numbered since Mr. Murdoch tweeted in September that the page was old-fashioned. A “No More Page 3” campaign has won support on social media in recent years, garnering almost 220,000 signatures in favor of scrapping the controversial images.

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Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new and trending TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, a company that catalogs, tags and measures activity around TV ads in real time. The New Releases here ran on TV for the first time yesterday. The Most Engaging ads are showing sustained social heat, ranked by SpotShare scores reflecting the percent of digital activity associated with each one over the past week. See the methodology here.

Among the new releases, Walmart’s Savings Catcher gets you ready for game day no matter where the party ends up, while PWC sees a child’s science project as so much more. And Si Robertson from “Duck Dynasty” goes “chickenflage” to enjoy Zaxby’s boneless wings in peace.

As always, you can find out more about the best commercials on TV at Ad Age’s Creativity.

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