Published by Sue Johns-Chapman
Published Date 11.08.2026 
Who Are Brand Champions?
For Brand Champions, flexible working has never been a policy added to the business after the strategy was written. It is the reason the business was created in the first place.
Founder and CEO Fiona Wylie established Brand Champions after returning from maternity leave and finding that the flexibility she needed simply did not exist, particularly for experienced senior marketers. Rather than accept that talented people had to choose between meaningful careers and a way of working that fitted their lives, she decided to build a different kind of agency.
That decision shaped Brand Champions from day one. Today, we are a remote first, freelance-led marketing agency with a permanent core team of five, supported by a trusted network of specialist freelancers. We help organisations solve complex marketing challenges through strategy, flexible marketing support, and hands-on execution. The model gives clients access to experienced expertise when they need it, while giving talented marketers the autonomy and flexibility they are actively looking for.
Our European Agency Awards entry was not about one campaign or one client. It was about the flexible way of working that makes all of our work possible, and the evidence that a people first model can also be a strong commercial model.
Built Around Trust, Not Presenteeism
Flexibility at Brand Champions is practical, not performative. Our team works with a high degree of autonomy and trust, with the freedom to organise work around life while remaining accountable to clients and one another. Remote working gives people flexibility, but we make deliberate space for connection too.
Weekly in-person co-working brings colleagues together, while monthly all team calls create a regular point for sharing progress, ideas, and challenges across the wider network. In July, the team travelled to Porto for a fully funded offsite that combined strategy sessions with time together outside work, including plate painting, port tasting and a boat cruise. The aim was simple: create the kind of shared experiences that are harder to build when a team is distributed.
That balance matters because autonomy works best when people also feel connected. We want people to have ownership of how they work, while knowing they are part of a team that will show up for them.
Investment That Helps People Keep Growing
A flexible model cannot come at the expense of development. Every member of the team has access to training budgets, and recent development has included Meta and Adobe certifications as well as an agency-wide AI ethics workshop. We want people to remain current, confident, and curious, especially as marketing changes at pace.
Recognition matters too. Matter Rewards gives colleagues a simple way to recognise each other, celebrate contributions and make appreciation part of everyday working rather than something saved for annual reviews. For a small team, those habits have an outsized effect on how connected people feel to the work and to each other.
A Way of Working That Reaches Beyond the Agency
We believe the same generosity that shapes how we work should shape what we give back. Brand Champions supports The Hygiene Bank and has provided pro bono marketing support to Mahaba Cafe and Man Club Jersey. Our LinkedIn #FridayAd series celebrates brilliant advertising while also shining a light on the largely independent agencies behind the work.
This year, Fiona Wylie also founded House of Champions in Jersey, a co-working space designed to bring people together around collaboration, community, and shared energy. It is another expression of the same belief that shaped Brand Champions: people do their best work when they have both freedom and a sense of belonging.
A Flexible Model With Commercial Evidence Behind It
The results of this approach are visible in the health of the business. Over the last 12 months, staff turnover has remained minimal, while quarterly surveys have recorded team and client satisfaction above 90 per cent. We have made more than 10 new hires this year and are still recruiting as the business continues to grow.
Client retention stands at 87 per cent, and revenue is up 42 per cent year to date. Those figures matter because Brand Champions relies on experienced marketers actively choosing to work with us. Our SOS model, which gives clients flexible access to skilled marketing resource, only works if talented people want to be part of the network. In that sense, flexibility is not separate from performance. It is one of the conditions that makes performance possible.
You can explore our Service on Stand By (SOS) model to see how flexible marketing support works in practice, or read our Hyperlocal vs Local Marketing: Strategy Guide for an example of the practical industry insight our team shares.
What Being Shortlisted Means to Us
Being shortlisted for Best Flexible Working Policy at the European Agency Awards feels especially meaningful because it recognises the part of Brand Champions that sits underneath everything else we do. Client work changes. Teams grow. Services evolve. The principle that people should be able to do ambitious, high-quality work without giving up the flexibility they need has remained constant.
For the team, the shortlist is recognition of the choices they make every day: trusting each other, sharing expertise, making time to connect, continuing to learn, and contributing to the communities around them. For the business, it is validation that flexibility and commercial ambition are not opposing ideas.
“Most agencies talk about culture. We built a business on it. Being shortlisted for Best Flexible Working Policy at the European Agency Awards is recognition that doing things differently, flexibly, generously, on people’s own terms, isn’t just kinder. It works.” Fiona Wylie, Founder and CEO, Brand Champions.
The Reason Brand Champions Exists
Most agencies describe flexibility as something they offer. At Brand Champions, it is the reason the business exists, and increasingly, the reason it performs.
We are proud to be shortlisted alongside agencies from across Europe and proud that the story being recognised is not just what we produce, but how we have chosen to build the business behind it.
