Summary

Teams often assume brand champions will surface on enthusiasm alone. In reality, that fails when influence, time and remit are absent. The durable route is to recruit deliberately: clear objectives, protected time, rotating tenure. Done well, it turns brand intent into visible behaviour, tighter cross-team alignment and faster strategy adoption.

→ Watch more videos in this playlist on YouTube

Our Perspective

What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.

The Influence Gap

Many organisations assume brand champions will simply appear: the most vocal people get a badge, and the rest will follow. That’s tidy on paper and messy in practice. When enthusiasm substitutes for influence, you get mixed messages, inconsistent behaviour, and short-lived spurts of activity. The real gap isn’t passion; it’s permission, time, and the social capital to move peers.

Content Stadium notes that only 30% of employer-branding teams currently run formal employee ambassador programmes, which suggests most organisations are still improvising rather than designing the role. The takeaway is straightforward: informal networks won’t carry strategic change without deliberate architecture.

Select For Influence

Champions should be chosen for their peer trust, cross-functional reach, and judgement under pressure. Think of them as a distributed leadership bench, mirrored across levels and regions to reflect your customer journey. We often see nominations default to tenure or charisma; the better predictor is who colleagues seek out when the stakes are high.

Anchor selection in clear criteria and treat it as a named role:

• Credibility beyond their own team, evidenced by who people ask for help.
• Reach across functions and locations, not just vertical expertise.
• Curiosity and the ability to convene diverse peers to solve real problems.
• A confirmed time budget and manager sign-off to protect capacity.

Design For Momentum

Once selected, champions need a remit that links to strategy and is measured by behaviour change, not activity. Equip them with field-ready stories, simple playbooks, and a way to de-risk first moves. Make support visible: leaders should model the behaviours champions are advocating.

Build practical scaffolding so momentum compounds:

• Define outcomes (e.g., adoption of new messages in key meetings), not a task list.
• Ringfence time and, where needed, reassign work to avoid overload.
• Provide a living toolkit: proof points, talk tracks, and templates for daily use.
• Create a fast escalation path for blockers measured in days, not months.
• Convene a peer community to share wins, missteps, and working examples.

Prove And Renew

Treat champions as a renewable network. Rotate membership every six to nine months to prevent fatigue and to surface new voices. Make recognition public but evidence-led, highlighting changes in how teams sell, serve, and decide. Measure what matters: leading indicators of behaviour and lagging signals of commercial progress.

Leadership implications:

• Tie champion metrics to behaviour shifts (e.g., consistent messaging in proposals, cross-team collaboration rates).
• Back them in public forums and protect their time in private.
• Mirror selection to the customer journey so influence maps to revenue moments.
• Refresh criteria as strategy evolves to keep the network relevant.

Get this right and you convert informal influence into an operating system for change—one that makes brand-led behaviours easier to do well, and harder to ignore.

Sources:

• Employer branding 2022 trends & social media statistics — Content Stadium

Further Resources

1. Transforming Brand Impact with Everyday Behaviour Change
2. Brand Consistency Beyond Content Guidelines
3. Elevating Brand Enablement for Team Alignment

Curious how this applies in your market? We’re speaking with leaders across industries every week. Let’s talk.

Back to top