For more than a few years we've been hearing an endless litany of bloviated pontifications as to why ad agencies must transform themselves into something...anything new.

Did you know that Toronto ad agencies are part of the reason the King West neighborhood in Toronto was named one of the 5 neighborhoods to stay in when visiting Toronto?

Unless you've been asleep for the last six months, you're well aware there's been a lot of hand wringing in advertising circles over the seemingly sudden increase in use of ad blockers.

Ad agency employees are not the only ones suffering from age discrimination in the marketing space. Brands do too.

Red Tettemer O'Connell + Partners has had a long tradition of welcoming new hires in interesting and inventive ways. Once the agency welcomed new hires by carving totem poles in their likeness. This week, the agency welcomed new creatives, Ron Villacarillo and Ben Levy, by creating actual, working Pez dispensers in their likeness. Check out a video of the Pez dispenser creations here. Villacarillo will join the agency as creative director/art director and will work on the agency's Dockers and Morningstar Farms clients. His past experience includes work at TBWA/Chiat/Day, McCann, CP+B and The Martin Agency. Levy will join the …

We've all seen it. Conference after conference where panel after panel consist solely of men. Well, Hana Rado, COO of Israeli ad agency McCann Tel Aviv, has come up with a solution to the problem.  Rado along with several others at her agency have launched Persona, a Web site on which qualified female speakers across many different fields are profiled. The site lists some 700 women so far. Mitt "binders of women" Romney would be proud.  The effort and the site also involve campaigning against conferences that under-represent women on panels by contacting some of the high-level attendees at these conferences, informing them of …

WTF? Seventy percent of the entire ad agency world is looking for a new job! No wonder everything is a mess.

It's always nice to see ad agencies do their part when it comes to charitable work. New York-based EGC, for the seventh year in a row, will participate in CreateAthon.  CreateAthon is a 24-hour creative event to benefit charities across the globe. Over 100 ad agencies around the globe have participated in an annual marathon creative event during which they donate talent to help nonprofits raise funds and awareness. More than 1,300 non-profits have been served, receiving nearly $17 million of agency work.   EGC, the only New York agency to participate, will work well into the night and regroup …

Last month several top executives from Havas Worldwide took over six gondolas on the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel in Chicago to conduct interviews.

This is just too much fun. UK-based ad agency Aptitude has released a collection of photos that imagine a broader world behind the images we've seen on popular album covers.   We've got a pensive Justin Bieber on the cover of his "My World" album. All is well until the image is zoomed out to reveal what's really going on. Bieber in cuffs getting arrested by a police officer.  We've got Adele on the cover of 19, which, when zoomed out, reveals her to actually have been in some kind of zombie movie. We've got that baby from the cover …