Yeh I think it’s the personality aspect which we need to harness.
I actually think the Reds at least have been good at getting exposure to clubs in general for a while. Training clinics, appearances etc have been decent.
The difference is we don’t have relatable players being plastered on billboards or associated with sporting Mecca events like State of Origin. It’s hard to bridge that gap at the moment.
Yeah, that's the tricky part with exposure levels though. You need that broader community fame to really take advantage of those personalities.
For what it's worth the Reds have really upped there social media game so far this year with a lot more player and coach interviews and general pre-season content. They do have a bit of a nascent tiktok presence too, which it looks like they might be leaning more into this year particularly focusing on personalities. It's mostly just some of the instagram content chosen to suit, but hopefully they have plans to build it out more once the season is going. Throw in the socks up podcast (hopefully they're continuing it) and individual player content, which looks to have more of the official media released straight to them to use, all the way to the more involved stuff like what Toomaga-Allen is doing and it's clear there is an effort to get them out there.
That's all only worth so much without the actual "fame" though - until the broader profile of the game (or at least the team) lifts you just won't see the broader public latch onto it. It's important they do have it there as a base for when/if that happens though, it may just take a successful season with some sort of home quarter/semi at Suncorp to kick start it. Next steps need to be more media engagement to help that flow into the Reds channels, both with traditional media and more with more modern social media personalities, though they are few and far between in the rugby space right now. This is probably drifting a fair bit off topic for the player exodus thread though.