Cheek, confidence, performance: How Harley Reid became the AFL's most wanted

The Age

26-04-2025

Reid and Puma agreed to a six-year extension at about the same time, with the company announcing the deal in a social media video with two hands counting to six, book-ended by two middle finger references.
The accompanying message was succinct once more: 'We've got your back. For six more years.'
Puma's marketing director Neysa Goh said the company identified Reid early as a standout with his on-field performance, but also his 'confidence and sense of cheekiness' that aligned with its brand.
'Puma is all about celebrating our athletes in a unique way, and pushing the boundaries with our creative,' Goh told this masthead.
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'We want to be able to find a way to work with their individual personalities if we can, so we will adapt our approach to the individual. With Harley, he comes across as a quietly determined individual, but there is a real fire and passion there. That enables us to think outside the box – it also helps that he has a sense of humour.
'It is important to us that our athletes know we have their backs.'
The Gemba Group rates Reid as the AFL's second- most marketable player, behind only Collingwood's Nick Daicos, across the past year, with a methodology that factors in reach, interest, influence and momentum.
Reid ranked comfortably as No.1 in momentum, third in interest and eighth in influence.
Rennie Gilchrist, a senior marketing consultant at Gemba, said Reid was an ideal case for companies to 'get in first' and establish a relationship to 'give them the best opportunity to reap the brand and commercial benefits down the road'.
Gilchrist likened what brands were doing with Reid to Sanitarium's decision to sign Alex de Minaur as their first tennis player 'Weet-Bix kid' five years ago, which has paid off with the Australian blossoming into a top-10 star.
'[De Minaur's] marketability has significantly grown over this period, delivering exceptional outcomes for the brand,' Gilchrist said. 'We suspect Harley's brand partners have the same strategy in mind.'
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Perhaps the best example of Reid's mass appeal is how other sports, including basketball and horse racing, asked him to serve as an ambassador for their events. He did that for the Caulfield Cup carnival, the NBL finals and Hoopsfest last year.
The NBL's head of marketing, Ben Jenkins, said the purpose behind Reid's ambassadorial role was to help them attract new fans, similarly to how they engage retired AFL champions Jack Riewoldt and Eddie Betts.
'There is a big crossover between AFL fans and basketball fans in general, so leveraging Harley's growing fan base made a lot of sense, in terms of reaching fans who may not have been exposed to, or seen, NBL games before,' Jenkins said.
'Harley is a basketball fan, and his cult brand status is well aligned with the cultural and lifestyle aspects associated with the NBL.'
Reid's marketability also secured him deals with the likes of Tempur, the Herdsman Market, Cleanskin Laser and DripHouse, while he walked out of Wanderlust's Perth store in February with two ACE-X e-bikes, which was, of course, all documented for his 127,000 Instagram followers.
Tony Barlow Perth kitted him out for last year's AFL Players' Association MVP awards night, when he was crowned the game's best first-year player, and he also appeared on Kayo Sports to promote UFC 305 in Perth.
Reid's commercial deals compensate for any financial shortfall from him being part of the original batch of top-20 draftees whose pay is capped into their third season in the newest collective bargaining agreement.
Either way, he is set to earn an enormous annual salary on his second contract – north of $1.5 million, and potentially approaching $2 million – whether he stays at West Coast or returns to Victoria, where Hawthorn, Geelong and Essendon are among the clubs hoping to lure him home.
'As a player, he is worth this [a significant salary], as a marketing tool, he is worth this ... and as a potential recruiter, he's worth that – you can't put a price on that,' Melbourne great Garry Lyon said on SEN of Reid late last year.
In another sign of Reid's popularity, his Swysh account, where fans can pay for personalised video messages from him, is currently booked out.
He is proving himself a natural in advertisements, including chugging a V Energy drink while featuring in a Toyota Hilux promotion.
Reid also stars in a new Optimum Nutrition commercial – which is on high rotation during AFL match broadcasts – where he mock apologises in a fake press conference that he ends with a wink as he plops a big tub of protein powder in front of him.
'I know I've caused some pain, turning my idols into rivals, and for that, I'm deeply sorry,' Reid says deadpan down the camera.
'So, to anyone that has [been], or will be, impacted, by my 'don't argues'; I wish you a speedy recovery. With whey protein isolate – the No.1 ingredient, unlike others – Optimum Nutrition gold-standard whey is absorbed fast into muscles to help your recovery.'
That cheekiness and confidence clearly doesn't just appeal to Puma.