#52Women52Weeks: Tamara McCleary urges all brands to use The Force in telling their story

Tamara McCleary is ranked by Klear in the Top 1% of global Social Media Influencers and is listed as one of the Top 50 Social Influencers of 2015 by Onalytica. She presents keynotes and workshops on the topics of Branding, Brand Amplification, Social Influence, Women’s Empowerment, Marketing to Millennials and Women, Women’s Leadership, Diversity, and Social Economics in a Sharing Economy. She is also the creator of the trademarked RelationShift method.

1) How can a struggling brand get more attention?

Everyone is competing for attention in the new social economy. The best way for a brand to get more attention in this overcrowded, highly competitive marketplace is to simplify brand messaging while engaging with the theme of the brand’s narrative in two-way conversations on the social media networks. This means that everyone within the company must be able to elegantly weave the brand narrative along every single customer touchpoint to mirror consistency of brand messaging.

Engaging through the power of a potent and powerfully connected brand message is irresistibly attractive and showcases a consistency that is rare with many companies today who are juggling multiple channels and delivering inconsistent messages. Consistency builds trust. To truly standout in today’s socially connected marketplace, a brand must differentiate itself through its level of engagement with customers.

One of the biggest mistakes I see brands making is that they are still stuck using outmoded, linear marketing models that broadcast messages across the social networks rather than blending genuine two-way communication with their audience, highlighting not only their brand messaging, but offering authentic conversations. Whether it’s B2B marketing or B2C marketing, or whether the brand is a start-up technology company, or a global fashion retailer, it matters not. What today’s savvy enterprises and consumers want is to be engaged with brands that are showing up on-scene as authentic, innovative, cutting edge, disruptive, and extraordinarily passionate about what they do.

2) What is the best way to craft a compelling story?

The best way to craft a compelling story is to consider the structure of the most compelling myths that have captured our attention and withstood the test of time. Think about the sheer power of myth over eons and we’re still, even in our modern age, invisibly drawn to The Force of a good story. Myths traditionally tell the story of a hero who is presented with a great quest and must overcome immense obstacles to fulfill a destiny.

To write a compelling story, we must follow the power of a well structured myth. When I am working with a brand to craft a compelling narrative, I utilize the wisdom and work of the late Joseph Campbell and his Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey gives us a framework for crafting a story that pulls us in. In fact, George Lucas credits crafting his epic story, Star Wars, using the blueprint found in Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

When looking to craft a compelling narrative, seek first to understand who it is that you want to connect with your story. What is important to them? How can you touch them where they suffer? What problems can you solve positioning yourself as the Mentor, Helper or Guide? Cast your customer as the Hero and ask yourself, what quest is your customer on?

The biggest mistake I see when a brand is building its narrative is that the brand is positioning itself from the wrong angle, they are focused on themselves and their fabulous product or service. This doesn’t contain the connected pull that it needs to be a compelling narrative to anyone outside the company. Brands mistakenly cast themselves in the role of Hero versus casting themselves more appropriately in the role of Mentor, Helper or Guide. As a company, how does your product or service solve a problem for your customer? Customers must be cast as the Hero of any story if you want to move them to take action. Whether you are writing a story as a novelist to sell a book, or crafting a compelling narrative to sell a product or service, it’s critical to know who you want to move by having shared your story. Why would your audience care? Answer this and you’re on your way!

The most compelling stories move us to take action, whether that be action to buy a book or action to partner with a brand or purchase goods and services. The best stories compel us to do something because they’ve touched us where we live. We love a compelling story, it’s encoded into our DNA. Stories remind us that we are human, we are connected, and we all experience deep suffering, as well as, rapturous triumph...and everything in-between. Stories remind us that we are not alone.

3) What is the most effective strategy businesses need to implement in a competitive marketplace?

Business strategies employed to increase customer personalization, and craft a delightful user experience are the most effective strategies businesses can implement to compete in today’s marketplace. Customers want personalization not personal invasion. Brands who are harnessing information using big data to personalize their products or services to their customers are seen as delightful. However, a brand openly sharing that they know their customer’s preferences before their customer even does, may creep them out and drive them away.

Good use of data analytics for customer personalization across customer touch points says, “Let us take the burden off of you, we don’t want to waste your time on things you don’t care about, may we suggest something that we think you’ll love?” Creepy says, “May we suggest some things you might like since we followed your mobile trail during your recent guy’s/girl’s trip to Vegas?”

It’s about infusing discernment into the data analytics and using the data carefully, and being incredibly respectful in how you share that information. Security and privacy are number one when it comes to acquiring, analyzing and leveraging customer data. Data is good when used wisely, to cater to customers and make them feel seen, heard, and valued.

Data also reveals something quite compelling about customer experience across the board. We now know through data analytics that the customer’s experience trumps pricing with respect to customer acquisition and retention. In fact, the U.S. Small Business administration and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce published statistics showing 68% of customer attrition is due to perceived indifference versus 9% due to pricing. Isn’t this shocking?! It gets even juicier... 86% of buyers will pay MORE for a better customer experience, but only 1% of customers feel that vendors consistently meet their expectations! The exciting part about these statistics is that there is massive room for improvement.

Imagine the possibilities for a brand who understands how valuable its customers are and focuses more energy and resources upon improving customer experience?! Companies who lower their customer attrition rates by even 5% stand to increase company profits by up to 95%! This is precisely why I firmly believe that a focus on personalization and customer experience is the most important strategy businesses can implement in a competitive marketplace.

4) What is your No. 1 tip to deal with rejection?

My number one tip to deal with rejection is to take a pause immediately when the rejection feelings show up in our experience and employ an instant investigation into what is being rejected. I find so much power in this reflective pause. It creates a space of opportunity to see things for what they really are versus losing yourself into an emotional reaction not grounded in present moment reality.

Most of the time when we feel feelings emerge from something occurring outside of ourselves, such as a circumstance or someone doing or saying something, what is happening is that we momentarily actualized ourselves unconsciously into an experience of the past. This past emotional memory gets triggered and is replayed and experienced in our present moment. Our minds are like giant file cabinets and our brains search for recognizable patterns in an attempt to frame-up our current experience and give us a context for understanding. I love to pause in order to pattern-interrupt the autopilot cognitive function of my brain, and allow a higher level consciousness to wash over and respond more intelligently and eloquently to the emotion that is showing up in my experience.

Remember “no” only has the meaning we give it. Take back your power and give only the meaning you want to the perceived rejection. If “no” could just mean “no” and nothing more, imagine the freedom we could all exist in.

5) Can we ever live guilt free and truly find a work / life balance?

I don’t think guilt-free is possible, but perhaps cultivating an understanding that guilt is simply a part of our human experience and just because we feel pangs of guilt doesn’t make us guilty. Making peace with guilt, (and other negatively experienced emotions), is probably the most honest place we can achieve as human beings. Guilt will ebb and flow and show up along our experience as will myriad emotions, but just because we feel a strong emotion does not make what the feeling implies true.

Many of us navigate life with all manner of private suffering underpinning our experience on a daily basis. Feelings such as guilt, remorse, sadness, regret, can hang out in the background like a the shadow of a watermark no matter what we do. We can even be in the middle of a happy moment and yet feel the seeds of a distant but ever- present sadness deep down.

Feelings are simply the gift of being human. It’s a vulnerability and a frailty that frame-up our deliciously imperfect perfection which crowns our human experience. Sometimes we grapple with feelings of guilt because we are perfectionists at our core whilst we wrestle with our inner angel living the duality of our limitation in an imperfect world. We demand far more from ourselves than we do from other people.

As far as work-life balance, I don’t think we are asking the right question. We are at the dawn of a new age that calls forth from us nothing less than a transformation of humankind. No one feels equipped to handle the massive societal and cultural changes so we often find ourselves as a society arguing, fussing, and fighting while pointing fingers as to the “right” way to live, love and work.

How can any of us know the answers in an era where technology is literally changing the way we live, work, and relate to one another? We are living into a time like no other in human history. All bets are off, this is uncharted territory and we must be very kind to ourselves and compassionate with one another as we find our way and our footing along the shifting sands of daily living in a new world.

It’s unrealistic to think we somehow can slice and dice our lives like pieces of pie and at the end of a day measure our worth and effectiveness against how many pieces each part of or life enjoyed that day. Living in this way is a set-up for serial disappointment. We would all be much happier if we could drop the balance debate and instead embrace a more holistic perspective of our lives and consider what kind of experience we wish to create versus measuring how much time we spend doing this and that.

We have a brand new world, a brand new discussion, and we are all blazing a new frontier never before explored in the history of our world. How can we judge our lives, ourselves, our families, our work, and each other using an outdated measuring stick that doesn’t even translate with the world we live in today? It’s like trying to use a sun dial as your time keeper instead of your iPhone or your smartwatch. It’s absurd.

We must break free of the rigid paradigm born of the industrial assembly line workforce and realize that none of us kisses our spouses goodbye in the morning as we walk out of our home, lunch pail in-hand, to a place of work from 9 to 5 and once returning home, we relax completely free from work until punching the clock again at 9a.m. the next morning. It’s time for a massive disruption in how we see ourselves, our “home,” “life” and “career.”

I posit that we reconsider viewing our lives through a more realistic 24 hour lens. Some of those hours we sleep, we eat, we love, we work, and (hopefully) play. Sometimes we play at-work, sometimes we work at- home. There are days when we work more than we sleep because we are launching a new product, new company, new service, or are traveling. There are some days that we play more than we work, or we sleep more than we play. We have limitless combinations to our 24 hour slices in our holistic life pie. It’s all just called experience. Our life experience.

In the end, isn’t it about our experience this lifetime? We will never get it all right, but did we enjoy the ride? Were we good stewards of our time? After all, the one absolute we have in-common is that we have an expiration date. At some point, life as we know it here on earth comes to an end. Begin right now to cultivate a full and diverse life, filled with experiences that ignite and excite you. If you leave this world having experienced what your heart and soul most wanted to experience while you navigated planet earth, there’s no guilt, only the sweet satisfaction of time well spent.

Connect with Tamara HERE

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