This post is based on the premise that the power of a person who genuinely believes in your organisation is about as good as it gets in terms of marketing. That idea is of course up for debate if you’d like it to be, but it’s our starting block for today.
It seems that, to create a brand advocate or champion, a lot of what we focus on can be teaching someone about brand guidelines and rules. Or getting colours right, that sort of thing. While I utterly understand the need for strong brand identity to have consistency, and that without it a brand doesn’t really make sense, I think that giving it most of our focus misses key opportunities. 
Anyone that you or your organisation interacts with is a potential brand advocate. And if they don’t champion us, then we could do worse than to ask ourselves why that is. In case I need to point at it, I am also saying that all users and donors should be outspoken advocates for their charities. And the same goes for asking ourselves why they aren’t.
I don’t have many brands, but I am about as good a marketing tool as you could get for the ones that have won me over. I’m a huge brand champion for my bank, for instance. And how many people can say that? It certainly is not perfect, but I can hand-on-heart say that I love my bank and frequently find myself telling people. Now how does that come about?
When I first went in to open a new account, disgruntled with my other, they asked where I lived. On hearing that I (at the time) lived in West London, the woman asked if I was sure that I wanted to open an account with them as they would soon only have one branch in London and she didn’t want me to have a difficult time getting to the into the branch when I needed to – So maybe they weren’t the bank for me? I nearly fell off my chair at the thoughtfulness of it.
And so my new bank began to build up my inner brand champion – just with this personal, honest approach. They have never misled me, give me a ring if they are concerned and have consistently managed to treat me with all of the nice bits of banking with a small town branch, regardless of being based smack bang in the centre of Piccadilly Circus.
They show me they care about me. They show me they know me. And so I tell the world.
Now THAT is how to build a brand champion.
