TLS Talent and House of Kitch recently brought two Australian sporting greats together to close out the Mumbrella Sports Marketing Summit 2024 with a riveting fireside chat between Kerry Turner and Tilly Kearns.
Fresh off the plane from the Paris Olympics, Kerry Turner, a proud former Stinger who agitated for women’s water polo to be included as an Olympic sport, interviewed
Tilly, a current Stinger who has just won a silver medal in Paris. They reflected that our female athletes achieved a record-breaking ‘lions share’ of medals at Australia’s most successful Olympic games ever.
Tilly shared the Stingers’ remarkable journey from relative obscurity to silver medal. “We hadn't won anything for a long time. And then eight months before the Olympics, we got a new coach,” she said. Bec Rippon turned everything upside down which was quite confronting for the team, but they drew on their two team values of bravery and respect which allowed them to trust the change and fully commit to the new program.
Tilly, with silver medal in hand (or a sock which is how she carries it around) reflected that “we had to respect the process and trust that the coaches knew what they were doing. And it also took bravery, because it's not easy. If it was easy, everyone would do it.”
As well as being a sporting superstar, Tilly has amassed a significant following on social media platforms TikTok (500K+ followers with videos reaching millions of views) and Instagram (over 141K followers) through sharing organic and authentic content (from ‘behind the scenes’ moments at the Olympics to videos of her dog).
Tilly shared that her social channels took off in Tokyo. “I just did it because I enjoyed it, and it gave me something else to do other than water polo,” she said. “A big motto of mine is to always have balance.”
One of her most successful videos from Paris was from the athletes’ village where Tilly posted the Fijian team singing hymns (something they would do twice a day). “I wanted everyone to feel like they were there with us, and that they were part of the team in that room listening to the Fijians,” she said. “I think that's why it was so successful, because people get to buy into the moment.
She emphasised that her content is organic and she doesn’t overthink it, posting things she finds cute, quirky or funny. “I'm not one dimensional,” she said. “No one in my team or in this room is one dimensional. That’s why it's so important to share a variety of things, rather than just me at the gym or me in the pool or ‘this is what I ate’. I think that content gets a bit monotonous, but when you can share social moments, that's when you’re staying true to yourself.”
Kerry calls Tilly an ‘Inspo-fluencer’ because her content is inspiring and uplifting which is different to content shared by some other female athletes.
“A really easy rabbit hole for female athletes to fall down is to make their social media all about their great physiques,” Tilly shared. “It’s easy clicks, but to make that your brand is troubling. You’re venturing into an audience that personally I don’t want. My community aren’t following me because I’m fit and strong, they’re following me because they like who I am as a person and what I’m putting out there.”
Tilly urges brands to trust athletes to know their audiences and what will work with them. “There's definitely been times where me and my management team, TLS Talent (formerly The Lifestyle Suite), have pushed back against brands, because brands are forcing a script onto me that I know isn’t what my audience wants,” she said. “That's when you start to get the disconnect and you start to lose engagement. It's important for brands to trust that the athlete has their authentic voice, but also for athletes to create their own authentic voice without turning to things like using their bodies and ‘what I eat in a day’, which I think are quite toxic.”
Tilly has a deep understanding of her audiences, even down to the different platforms they’re on, and uses this knowledge when working with brands. “TikTok is where most of my followers are and can go the most viral. If it blows up, it really blows up,” she said. “But Instagram is where my communities are. So, if a brand means something special to me, I prefer to use Instagram because I can create it and make it in a way that my audience can connect with. I feel that gets the most engagement and the most response. I put all the trusted stuff I really like on Instagram and I’m open to everything on TikTok.”
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