Jesse Cole and his Savannah Bananas – lessons in fans first.
Almost every business wants fanatic fans who will share their story with a rabid-like passion. In Jesse Cole’s new book, Fans First, he provides an invaluable lesson to learn about someone who has made a hit by making his brand stand alone in the field.
That field is baseball, specifically minor league baseball in South Carolina.
The Savannah Bananas should not exist. You can’t name any of their players. They play in a 1920s-era ballpark with no ads or billboards. They play in kilts, stilts, and stilettos. They even have an all-grandma dance team: the Banana Nanas.
Everything the Bananas do is unconventional. It shouldn’t work.
And yet they sell out every game, have a waitlist in the thousands, ship merchandise around the globe, and entertain millions of followers on social media. ESPN calls the Bananas “the greatest show in baseball.”
How is this even possible? Two words: FANS FIRST.
In his new book Fans First, Jesse Cole teaches you to stand out in your marketplace, drive explosive growth, and inspire passionate loyalty.
If this sounds bananas, that’s the point.
Normal leaders read normal books and get normal results. But if you’re ready to change the game, break the rules, and create your fantastic team, then it’s time to go Fans First.
The Savannah Bananas are a baseball team based in Savannah, South Carolina. The Bananas compete in the Coastal Plain League in the West division. Since its inaugural season in 2016, the team has played at Grayson Stadium.
Following the departure of the South Atlantic League’s Savannah Sand Gnats on September 22, 2015, the Coastal Plain League announced Savannah as its newest team to begin to play for 2016. On February 25, following a name-the-team contest, the team officially revealed the Banana’s name, logo, and colors.
Top Banana
Jesse Cole is a fanatic about fandom. In 2016, he founded Fans First Entertainment and launched the Savannah Bananas baseball team with one mission: to spark a fan-focused movement.
Whether at the ballpark, on social media, onstage delivering keynotes, in features for ESPN and Entrepreneur, or in his first book, Find Your Yellow Tux, Jesse continues to create fans worldwide.
Jesse is the proud inventor of Banana Ball and Dolce & Banana underwear and not-so-proud promoter of the Human Horse Race and Flatulence Fun Night.
Watch this overview video if you want to learn more. If you don’t see the video below, click here.
FANtastic
The Bananas recorded over 91,000 total fans at 25 home games in 2016. They broke the CPL’s single-season attendance record, previously held by the Peninsula Pilots, after only 22 regular-season games. The team also ranked second in average attendance (3,659 fans per game) among 160 collegiate summer teams. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the team reduced capacity to 30% to ensure safe distances between fans.
The Bananas sold out for the 2021 season in July. This was the first season back to total capacity since the pandemic restrictions were lifted.
How is this possible? His heroes are Walt Disney, PT Barnum, and Bill Veeck. They have a wait of over 20,000 people who want to get tickets. They are like a circus where a baseball game breaks out.
When he bought the team, he did what everyone else did. It was a standard marketing plan with a conventional approach to how a minor league team promotes itself. They did what everyone else did.
“Whatever is normal, do the opposite.”
With every constraint (like Covid), they had to reimagine every game element. From rain delays to announcers leaving opened opportunities to try something new. Constraints allowed him to “how you view things is how you do things.”
Attention beats marketing
They don’t have a marketing plan. And 2 million Tik Tok followers. They have an attention plan.
Every Monday, they have over-the-top moments (OTT) – a player who does a split before hitting. That’s an attention moment or a 10 ft pitcher on stilts. A dancing umpire – is another attention moment—a point where you do something no one else does.
Jesse constantly asks what are we doing to create attention? We are a media company – you must do something worthy of attention. The best opportunity to do something unexpected is when something goes wrong because of expectations. Customer expectations are so high.
When it rains – they want fans to have a fantastic time. So, they have a 3-hour rain delay script. Imagine that – they plan for things that go wrong – how can they create a remarkable experience when something interrupts their plans?
“The three most powerful words are: You wouldn’t believe what happened at the stadium tonight. We want to create YWB moments.”
That’s how we design everything we do. Players get autographs from kids instead of vice versa. They deliver roses to little girls in the stands, trying dozens of new ideas at every event. They have no fear of failing, but they know that bad ideas are how you learn.
We try 5-10 new things every night. Most fail – but we learn from the failures.
How can you grow is the wrong question? Growth, revenue, and sales aren’t what motivates his team. The question they ask is how we can create more fans. What are fans first?
Tickets for the Savannah Bananas are $20 for everything (except beer, which isn’t allowed), From hot dogs to soda to popcorn to parking. They leave money on the table because they want to generate new fans – that’s their primary goal.
When you create fans, they take care of the revenue and profits. We don’t chase customers. We delight our fans.
Customers buy things from you. A fan is a different feeling: excitement and warm, positive thoughts. Traditional marketing can get customers, but fans’ first moments get fans.
Long-term fans beat short-term profits. Are your fans willing to wear your logo regularly when they don’t have to?
What’s the secret? Jesse has a framework he follows:
- Eliminate friction – Baseball is long, slow, and tedious. We eliminate that friction. No nickel and dime approach to revenue. They are always looking for little friction points to eliminate. Audit your fan’s friction points. Every pay point shouldn’t be a pain point. We even make our invoices fun.
- Entertain always – Every moment is an opportunity to celebrate and bring joy to a fan. We are turning an experience into pure entertainment. Entertaining marketing gets remarkable results. Little things like voice mail, email signatures, or rain delays become places to have fun. What’s the typical experience, and how can we do the opposite? The Bananas remind me of the Harlem Globetrotters, a team I loved to watch as a kid growing up.
- Experiment constantly– People don’t remember the failures; they remember the successes from the experimentations. Jesse talks about Bezos’s belief in experiments and claims his success is based on a culture of experimentation. There are five new experiments at every game.
- Engage deeply – Jesse believes that you need to break through the clutter to get noticed. How can you go a few feet deeper with a connection? We aren’t competitor obsessed. We are customer-obsessed. And that requires a deep dive to build strong engagement.
- Empower action – We always empower our employees to experiment and try things at the micro-attention level.
Jesse eliminated the word sales from the Savannah Bananas organization. The language we use is essential. No one wants to be sold or marketed to or sold to. Everyone is oriented toward a fans-first mindset.
If you want to listen to a terrific interview with Jesse, here is a podcast from Douglas Burdett on his show, The Marketing Book Podcast.
You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Watch a short video about working with me.
