change

Limelight PR has a new home in London. From our previous office in Belgravia we have relocated to a Crown Property on Lower Regent Street. Whomever said change is good, never moved offices. They clearly weren’t responsible for packing up an entire office, its inhabitants and moving heaven and earth across town.

It was quite the exercise in military-like planning and coordination! How else do the domino-like logistics required get ticked off to ensure that the first location shuts down and the new fires up with seamless integration. Throw in a broken down lift and you can imagine fun that was had.

In the end, even the all-important desk location real estate land grab went off without a hitch and we are now settled into a fantastic new space just off Piccadilly Circus. We’re not one to brag but….

receptionIMAG0077 — Our swanky new reception

The new slick kitchen and chill out room

View from the roof — Our new super central view of Piccadilly Circus, London

Reading the papers this morning one theme that seemed to spring off the pages was that of change. Maybe this is not particularly surprising as it’s the start of the year and many people will be busy trying to change habits with their new year’s resolutions.

Nevertheless, change does seem to be featuring stronger on the agenda than in previous years. To start the leading article for The Guardian this morning was about the proposed change in rules regarding product placement, and the backlash it’s creating. But the reality is that commercial television is under huge pressure. They need to adapt, change and evolve…. or risk extinction to online services.

Another example of the force of change can be seen with a study by the Princes Trust that suggests that unemployed young people struggling to find work could potentially be “scarred for life” by their first experiences of the job market.

There were countless other examples. Including a look at how musicians are being forced to change how they work in order to survive. The piece says fans are expecting more, which means musicians have to do everything from giving away locks of their hair to playing a round of golf with fans for money. Nothing and no-one seems immune with even the football refusing to conform to the normal world order.

Seth Godin recently blogged about the relevance of change in this decade – declaring it a choice between embracing change or suffering the consequence of frustration. Strong words indeed!

I don’t want to belittle the issues of product placement or graduate unemployment, which clearly both need careful consideration. But I think there is a lot of value in looking at these issues through the embracing change perspective. For example there have been some great examples of people using creativity to stand out in the job market such as the creator of ihiredjeffclark.com who built a website rather than sent out CVs.

With a new government looking likely to come into power in the first half of this year, wanting things to stay the same is pretty futile. We may not always like it but it seems that for now at least, the idea of embracing change is the best New Year’s resolution you can have.