I recently had the opportunity to spend the morning on Boston Harbor with the rest of Boston’s social media elite, sucking down free OJ and muffins and listening to some really interesting speakers talk about how they are using social media in their business and personal lives.

The venue was pretty cool as well. It was at a big three story bar/lounge/Puma store made out of big shipping containers. I’d classify it as “cargo-chic.” Very cool looking.

The last speaker of the morning was C.C. Chapman, a local media maven, marketer and podcaster that I’ve had the opportunity to hear present a few times now. He always seems to have something thought provoking to say, so I grabbed some video of his presentation to share with all you wonderful folks below.

The point that C.C. really drove home was that brand passion exists, and is a huge untapped resource for companies out there. Any company is bound to have customers that are passionate about the relationship that they share with your brand and letting that passion quietly sit to itself is an immense untapped resource.

“Brands are blowing the fact that they can leverage their fans and customer in ways that a print ad and a television ad doesn’t.”

You can run a million print ads trying to convince them how much they will love your company if they try their product, or you can hit them over the head with videos, blogs, podcasts and pictures from all of your existing passionate customers that are just itching to share their stories. What would you react faster to?

The point is that when marketing and PR departments are looking at the resources available when creating a campaign strategy, it is too easy to get stuck in budgets, existing collateral, editorial opportunities and everything else that has sustained their focus since the dawn of their marketing careers. Brand evangelists are one of any company’s hugest assets and ,in most cases, would love to be approached by the company that they feel so connected to and asked to help spread their story.

There are a lot of things in my life that get my blood flowing, but very few of them are actual brands. Of those that are, I’d be more than happy to stay up late on a Sunday night editing a YouTube video or a new blog post to share my experience with their product.

Two brands that I am passionate about are Mazda and Asics. My Mazda is the most money I’ve spent on something where just about every day I’m glad that I did. That little car rocks. Asics because when I first became a runner in High School, they were my shoe of choice. While I’ve switched back and forth over the years, I always return to Asics. A good fitting pair of Asics shoes is like home to me.

What about you? What brands would you loose sleep over just to help tell their story?