Change the Social Game with Savannah Bananas’ Fans-First Approach

transcript was exported on May 13, 2022 – view latest version here.

Cole:

one metric we look at is not views, not likes, not comments. It shares because that is as you know, word of mouth marketing

Baer:

You were gonna tell your friends someday that you heard this episode of social pros because our guest on the program this week is going to be a big, big, big deal. If you took Abe, Saperstein the founder of the Harlem Globetrotters added a di a little dash of bill V, the baseball promotional pioneer, and combine that into a candy coated PT, Barnum wrapper, and then taught all three of them. How to use TikTok. You would have this week’s guest on the show, Jesse Cole, he’s the owner of the Savannah bananas baseball team, which is sweeping the country, all kinds of media coverage. We’ll talk about that today, but one of the reasons we wanted to have my buddy Jesse on this show is he’s got a brand new book coming out in just two or so weeks called fans. First change the game, break the rules and create an unforgettable experience. Could not recommend this book highly enough. Go pre-order it today because I’ll tell you what this book is going to sell out instantly on the Amazon, wherever you get your books. So make sure you get your pre-order in, or you’re gonna be caught waiting for shipping delays. It’s that good? He’s that good? Jesse Cole, thanks for taking the time. Welcome to social pros.

Cole:

I’m fired up and thank you for the, the emphasis of big, big, big, big, I’ve never been called big that many times. So thank you for that.

Baer:

we’ve got another 30 minutes, so I could call you big a few more times, but you’ve got a lot going on. I mean, even since like the last two weeks, right? You’ve been on ESPN a couple times interview with HBO sports, a bunch of other media coverages going crazy for Savanna bananas. Thank you for taking the time to do the show for, for folks who are not familiar. I guess it probably makes most sense, Jesse, to just frame it up, tell ’em what the bananas is and and we’ll get into it.

Cole:

sure. And, and you know, how much love I have for you and how much we’ve learned from you and, and everything that you’ve taught my friends. Thanks. So let’s go back I guess, yes, we’re a baseball team. But it’s a circus and a baseball game breaks out is what people refer to us as it is a complete circus. And so it went, didn’t start that way. Six years ago, my wife and I bought a baseball team to come to Savannah, Georgia. We had this big goal of making it fun, making it entertaining. And we only sold a handful of tickets in our first few months. And by January of 2016, we had overdrafted our account. We had to sell our house. We were sleeping on an air bed and it was at that moment, Emily. And I said, we had to go all in and really create something different.

Cole:

so we named the team after a fruit, we became the Savannah bananas and we came over with our senior citizen dance team called the banana bananas. We came up with our male cheerleading team called the man Annas. We came up with a banana baby before every game that we lift up into the air and sing, nah, Savanna, NA. And we basically just made it into a wild, crazy show. And fortunately, the fans came out that opening night, we were wearing green uniforms because we weren’t quite ripe. And we played that way. We made six errors, played terrible, but the fans watched NS dance and they watched players deliver roses to little girls in the crowd. And they watched the break dancing coach and the banana pep band. And they told everyone, and as you talk about talk triggers and word of mouth marketing, they spread the news. And since that day we have sold out every single game. And I was just told by our team, our wait list has passed 25,000 for tickets. So it’s amazing. We’re taking our tour. We’re traveling over the country. We developed a new game called banana ball, and we’re having a lot of fun on social media as well.

Baer:

wanna touch on that briefly. So the bananas are in the COSAL Plains league, which is a, a collegiate summer baseball league. So you actually are in like an actual league, right? You play real opponents, you have a schedule in games and all that. Of course you do it with a lot of pizazz and Verve as mentioned. And I’m sure some of your opponents are like, oh, great. We gotta go play the bananas again. We’re just trying to get a base hit. And these guys got old ladies dancing and and confetti cans and everything else. But then as you mentioned, you now are, are doing sort of a globe Trotter style world tour, where you take the show on the road, transcending your regular baseball league and, and taking the bananas brand of fun and more importantly fan experience to stadiums all across the country. And of course in that regard, the, the sky is is a limit. Is it not?

Cole:

And that, that is the future. We started as a college summer team and playing regular games and we realized a friction point that baseball was still too long, too slow, too boring. We couldn’t control that. So that’s why we developed banana ball. The two hour time game where, you know, batteries could steal first. There’s no bunting and a fans catch a foul ball. It’s an out, which has happened three times already on this tour. And we bring the fan on the field and it gets a standing ovation. It’s a really cool moment. So that’s the future. I don’t know how long the coastal plane league will be a part of us, but people want this banana ball. And when fans line up, I mean, we were in Montgomery, Alabama, and 5,000 fans lined up three hours before the game started. It’s things we’ve never seen before. And we know they want us to be a part of something that’s new and unique, and that’s what we’re doing.

Hrach:

really is truly a site to behold. And, and I don’t say that lightly, I live in Phoenix, which is of course, spring training Mecca for so many. And we just went to several games this season, and I gotta say, Jesse, there was no flaming baseball bats. There was nobody on stilts. There were, I mean, you know, there’s their typical in between innings shows, but I’m a little jealous now and I’m a little, so a little jealous cuz the world tour is sold out. Is that correct?

Cole:

Every game sold out, every city sold out and it it’s, it’s pushing us to go to more cities. And I think one of the things we test, it’s always about experimenting and that’s a huge thing on social media, as we know, but for us last year we did a one city world tour. I mean, that’s what we started with. We called it a one city world tour and now we expanded to seven cities and next year 25 cities. And I think Phoenix is potentially somewhere soon will be coming there. So it and Indiana too, we’ll be looking at that as well, Jay. So I think we’re gonna expand like crazy and just have fun because the demand people wanna see these things they never see before in a baseball field.

Baer:

don’t wanna get too granular into the roster side of it, but you’ve got a separate touring team that that’s part of the, the touring program. And then you’ve got the regular collegiate players to play to play, you know, quote unquote regular baseball. Is that correct?

Cole:

correct. Yeah. We developed the Savanna bananas that play the party animals, which are crazy. They come in jumping over the fence with Roman candles and fireworks and deliver pizzas to their dugout and literally shotgun drinks in the middle of the game. That’s the villain playing the bananas. But the crazy thing is the globetroters who I’ve got to know very well. They travel with 30 people on their tour. We travel with 120 on our tour. Wow. So it’s completely unscalable, but that’s one of my beliefs that is that if you wanna do the scalable, you have to do the unscalable first. And so I don’t know how we’re gonna scale it, but I know we wanna deliver a show that’s so unforgetable that we create fans that tell everyone about it. And I think that will take care of itself in the future, but it’s, it’s big. And the bananas lose the bananas, lost a game last weekend in west Palm beach, which was not how you write it up, but it makes it real in between the show. And I think that’s really important to keep the validity of what we do.

Baer:

talk about the, the book for a second. So excited that it’s coming out, you of course draw from a lot of your own experiences and lessons that you learned, building the bananas from literally nothing, just an idea to, to what it is today in, in in six short years, you talk about the five E five E to create raving fans and as a sucker for alliteration myself, I love the fact that there are five, five E in the book eliminate friction, entertain, always experiment, constantly engage deeply and empower action. I love the eliminate friction idea because if there’s one thing and you touched on it briefly, Jesse, that baseball traditionally has is a lot of friction. It’s it’s, it is an imperfect game especially for the modern age. And, and I know you have decided to throw out the mold with banana ball, but also just in terms of the fan experience at your own home park Grayson, and, and then also on the road tour, talk a little bit about some of those friction points and how you identified them and, and swept them away.

Cole:

And, and I think it’s a starting point for all innovation is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and look at the friction points. And I believe there’s macro friction industry level, and then there’s the micro frictions. And so the macro friction for baseball long, slow and boring, you go to a stadium, you get nickel and dimed, you know, and then you can go even further down the macro fiction and all the advertisements and all the ads around the ballpark and just keep going with that. And so we’ve attacked them. Like we are fanatical about the fan experience so long, slow and boring, obviously from the pep band to the break, dance and coach to the dancing, umpire to the senior citizen dance team. Yes, there’s a lot of dance, but we, we have a magician. Now we have princess potassium. Now I just talked to the world champion sign spinner that I want in the future, that he’ll be coaching third while giving signs and spinning them.

Cole:

we’re constantly looking at how to entertain and keep it fast. And then banana ball. Now a two hour time game nickel and dimed, everyone knows they’ve gone to a ballpark. They’ve bought your tickets and you pay a ticket fee and then you pay a convenient fee, which is the most inconvenient fee in the world. And then you pay taxes and a $35 ticket is 52, 85, whatever we eliminate, we have no ticket fees, no convenient fees. And we pay your taxes. A $20 ticket in, in Savannah includes all your burgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, soda, water, popcorn, dessert, everything, no parking fees, no ticket fees, no convenient fees, none of that. So that is eliminating the friction. And now in our stadium, Savannah, we even eliminate all of our ads. It’s an ad free ballpark. You’re not gonna get advertised to an announcements because it’s no one wakes up in the morning and wants to be advertised to sold, to or marketed to. So it is crazy. It was a crazy move to make two weeks before the pandemic to throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars. But what has happened now is our merchandise is now seven times what we did in total sponsorship seven times. And so I think you look at where the money comes from. Look at sports, major league sports comes from TV revenue. It comes from sponsorship. It comes from rev shares. 98% of our revenue comes from our fans, that’s who we work for. And so that’s how we make every decision decision

Hrach:

that is absolutely phenomenally insane. Cuz obviously, you know, everybody knows that pretty much everything in life that we enjoy runs on advertising dollars or is made possible by advertising dollars. And what was that stat again? It was seven times. What you were making in sponsorships

Cole:

now merchandise and that’s growing leaps and bound. I mean, we’re doing hundreds of orders a day online, all over the world. And when we go to a stadium on our tour, it’s bigger than anything we could ever imagine. And I think it’s because we’ve worked so hard to create these fans that they wanna wear the logo. If we want a great test of, of a brand, are people willing to wear your logo and anything like Yeti, for instance, it they’re a cooler brand, but people wear their hats cuz they believe what they believe and they know they love what they stand for. That’s what we’re so passionate about is creating a brand that people wanna wear.

Baer:

you now a t-shirt company with a baseball division?

Cole:

it’s interesting. Our, our most teams, like I said, have so many revenue breakdowns. It is tickets and merchandise. And then here in Savannah, it’s the extra food and bag of the alcohol and the premium items, but that’s it. And so we’re so focused and simplified that we can create all these videos and content that people can buy merchandise or they can try to buy tickets.

Hrach:

clearly right outta the gate eliminating friction, you have completely engineered the process to remove the friction, but sometimes the source of friction, isn’t always so obvious to other businesses. So in that case, you know, obviously you can look at, you know, reviews and, and ratings and complaints, but were there other non obvious areas of friction that you found throughout your process and throughout your research and, and anything else that other social pros might be able to use to identify hidden sources of friction for their fans.

Cole:

you for this question. I love this question. Yes. I, I, I learned this from Walt Disney and when Walt Disney built Disneyland, he had an apartment above the fire station on main street and every day he would get out and he’d go disguised, he’d walk with the, the guests he’d get in line with the guests, he’d go on rides. And he said, Walt said, whenever I go on a ride, I’m always asking what’s wrong with this thing. And how can it be improved? He was looking for this friction with every step back in the 1950s before he passed. And so, yes, I believe we start doing this. We go undercover fan. So every night someone on our staff goes undercover. We park with the fans. We walk in with the fans, we sit with the fans, we eat with the fans. We listen to the fans.

Cole:

so I do it and I have to be quiet now cause people recognize my voice. But the first time I did a couple years ago I was parking and there was no great parking. And in my car hit a pothole and bottomed out. I would’ve never known that if I didn’t go undercover. And so then I walked in, I saw our parking penguins were literally eating burgers with their back, turned to me, which I never would’ve thought our parking penguins are supposed to be passing up free pops to say to kids stay cool tonight. But they literally were eating burgers, doing the opposite. So even in social media, how often do you go through your social experience, go through your feed. How many times are you selling something versus actually entertaining? How many times are you giving something that, that people like, as opposed to trying to get something in return, if you look at our social feed, we never ask our fans for anything. And if for some reason we show merchandise, we showed in a cool entertaining video. And so I think about how do you, how often do you go undercover as a fan of your business? And that’s how you can find a lot of these things you never thought you’d see before.

Hrach:

it is. It’s crazy how we get so involved and so wrapped up working on the business and in the business that we don’t actually take a step back to experience it as a fan or just as, as anybody would experience our brand.

Cole:

a hundred percent. I mean, how, how quickly can people find a phone number on your website? How quickly can they, can they reach out to you? How quickly do you respond? What’s your voicemail is your voicemail. Please listen closely as menu options have changed. Dial one for this dial 10 for this dial 11 for this, give your social security number for this. I mean go through those process. What’s your whole music. Is it boring? Ours is ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, banana phone. And every two weeks someone calls us and asks us to be put on hold. It’s the weirdest thing in the world. So you can look at those points by going through the experience and really be change the experience for your customers and your fans.

Baer:

has everybody’s menu options changed? That’s the question I have. And, and how long ago did they change? What is the statute of limitations on the changing of the menu options to, to alert me and how often have you memorized it? So that you’re like, oh, thank thankfully. They warned me that the menu options have changed, cuz I would just, I was really there, there there’s, there there’s a book chapter in that somewhere, at least a LinkedIn post I’m gonna, I’m gonna get on that one a hundred percent. One of the other five E in the book fans first is to experiment constantly. And you certainly have found a winning formula for what you’re doing in social media. You just passed 2 million fans on TikTok, 300,000 on Instagram and that’s a relatively steep climb. You haven’t been doing it all that long. Almost 50 million individual likes now on TikTok, which is incredible. That rewards a lot of experimentation. And what, what was that process like? How did you kinda get going and what have you changed over time?

Cole:

especially with TikTok and when we first started it, you know, it was just two years ago when you think about it, which is crazy. And we had an intern just take it over. And she started posting and we finally got like one video that got like 200,000 views. We were like, whoa, this is pretty good. And I started paying attention. I was like, Ooh, all right, there’s an organic opportunity here. So I went to her, I said, Savannah, I have one thing that I asked for you post every day. And she goes, what do you mean? I don’t know. We don’t have the content content. I go post every day, find a way because the more we post, the more we’re gonna learn. And I believe, and I share this in the book constraints, foster creativity. That’s actually a constraint in the, when the off season, when we have no players here, how do you find content?

Cole:

have to force yourself to create. And, and you know, I believe that in and Jeff Bezo said it, he said our success is a direct function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day. And so that was the one guiding light. I said, experiment post every day. And then let’s every week recap what worked well. And we have a different metric than probably anyone else uses in social media. And yes, like during this banana ball tour, I think we’ve got 300 million views of our videos. That’s not as important to me. The one metric we look at is not views, not likes, not comments. It shares it shares because that is as you know, word of mouth marketing. If you create something that people want to share, it provides such value to them that gives them social currency to share.

Cole:

we review what got the most shares. And then we have a guideline say, Ooh, all right. When we do this during the game, when our players do a dance choreographed in the middle of a pitch and then throw a pitch that gets more shares than anything else. So we will put the gas on that and keep experimenting. So that has been kind of our guideline with social media use. And every night at our stadium, we do between five to 10 things during a game we’ve never done before in front of a life crowd. Most of them don’t work. You either have a success or you have a story. We get a lot of stories or almost every single night, but because that experimentation, we are learning faster and accelerating our growth faster than anyone else in sports right now, in our opinion,

Baer:

I would guess that the individual segments on TikTok that tend to get shared the most are those that are the most unexpected, that are the farthest outside, the existing frame of reference, because it’s different. It makes it shareable. If it’s just good, it may be good enough to solicit a reaction, but it’s not unusual enough that you wanna use your own social capital to share it. And that’s one of the things that I’m so impressed by the, the work that you do, as you said, every game you’re rewriting, the playbook quite literally is it’s things that have truly never been done on, on a baseball field. And that appetite for nightly reinvention I think is, is extraordinary. How far in advance do you kind of figure that out? Right? So we got a game Friday, we’re gonna try and do five things we’ve never done before. When do you start piecing that together? Like what’s the experimentation calendar or cadence?

Cole:

it’s, it’s a good question. And we finally started getting a little better at it. We struggled this mightly, but you know, our, our general concept is we believe attention beats marketing 1000% of the time. So we don’t have marketing plans. We have attention plans. And so I had our team study SNL. When you think about SNL, what they do every week to be able to produce new creative content and then have a full live show by the end of the weekend, we’re in the same business as SNL. So what is our weekly schedule to create that? So what we developed with our director of entertainment and our attention team, we developed this. And so on Monday mornings, we have an OTT meeting, which is over the top. So those are over the top moments that we’re gonna do that are completely crazy. And so it starts with that.

Cole:

start with our three, two twos, which we learn is the third inning, the second batter, the second pitch, we always have our pitcher and our infielders do something. Whether it’s the single ladies dance, which we haven’t even released yet, let’s groove tonight, the drop every single game. It starts with that because that has been huge. We on growth, our four, one fourth inning, first batter, first pitch, our umpire’s gonna do a choreograph dance while dusting off the bases. Then we go bigger a batter doing a split while coming up to bat a batter, smoking a cigar while is coming up to bat the bat on fire, coming up to bat. We look at all those moments. And so we look at our, our script for that weekend. Do we have three to five that we believe, at least a few of those. If we film right, it’ll pop and be big.

Cole:

that’s our attention plan that we create. So we go through that OTT on Monday, then we do our script read, we go through our script, then we do rehearsals. So people don’t realize before a game, most people are practicing baseball. We are practicing all these moments, how we’re gonna film them, how we’re gonna capture them is the back and the light on fire. Is he gonna drag the bat? Is he how he gonna carry it? How is he gonna do the split? Is he gonna get up in between each pit and do the split? Is our pitcher on stilts? Is he gonna pitch? Is he gonna throw a curve ball? How are we filming this? All of that rehearsal is done before we even open the gates. So we’re ready to film it when there’s a sold out crowd in front of us. This,

Hrach:

I am seriously sitting here in awe. Like I had a question lined up for you now I’m I’m so in awe of this plan, because it just, it really does go back to, again, all the ease that you’ve hit on, you know, entertain always obviously is in there with what you just talked about, experimenting constantly. And then also engaging deeply in everything that you do, which we haven’t even started talking about engaging deeply, but it’s, it’s really amazing that everything you do is designed as these building blocks and steps and foundational pieces that are I I’m. So in particular right now, because that, that’s just awesome that you do this every week and you actually go through these plans. Like it’s, it’s really cool to see this come to life and see just how foundationally embedded all of these ease are put into practice.

Cole:

thank you. I, I think the really cool thing is it, it, more than anything gives our team purpose, it gives us drive like we’re excited because you know, people get bored when they’re doing the same things over and over again. But because every week we get to do it and then we get to send out to the world and we’re like, oh my goodness, this video’s got 30 million views and a hundred thousand shares. Like outta nowhere, they get to feel pride. And this is something that I learned from Bob Iger, from Disney. He said, you know, if we want people to really love working for Disney, we gotta create great movies, great characters and great storylines that our people are proud of. And so that’s kinda what brings us all together is that we love doing it because we get to go set it down the world and get that immediate feedback that are fans like this.

Baer:

let me ask you a mechanical question. As you mentioned, you’ve got to rehearse all the different bits in the show to see how you’re gonna block it, film it, create the content for social media, for the website, et cetera. You have an advantage and that you are in control of the product yourself. So you can have people with cameras on the field during play in a, in a more regular routine baseball scenario. You look at the Yankees versus red Sox. People with cameras are not like out there on the dirt, right? They’re in the camera. Well, et cetera. So how have you solved for that over time? And have you changed that during your, during the couple years you’ve been making the content in terms of how you actually get the shot?

Cole:

well, it’s, it’s funny because the, the, the subtitle has changed the game break, the rules create out forgettable experience. So we, we do break a lot of rules and we’ve been fined a lot by leagues in the past of what we’ve done. so I’m not gonna say we, we completely get away with it, but yeah, I, I think the biggest challenge for me was always trying to create the live show and not take away from it. So when we have so many cameras, my fear has always been taken away from the live show, but I’ve gotten over that because I realized that, well, we only have 4,005,000, 10,000, depending on what we’re playing in front of a live stadium, then we can impact 10 million, 20 million that it’s okay. Cuz people can still say I was there when that happened. So the live crowd can still feel it.

Cole:

as regards to the blocking, you know, what we’ve learned on our experimentation on TikTok is that the tight shots always work. So we have to allow a cameraman to be on the field, coming with them. When we had a player come out of a, a police car this past week, our ESPN, we had our camera crew was inside the cop car with him in, in the whole time. Cause we realized that is worth the shot to get out and cover it. So I’ve got an over that. But I, I think now it’s, I let our team get the shots, but when we have HBO sports at ESPN and today’s, and everyone’s there and there’s 30 cameras, it’s very tough. I go, guys, we’re gonna have to stay off. One person can get this shot and maybe we can share it. So I don’t know if that’s where, where you’re going mechanical, but again, that’s, it goes experimentation.

Baer:

And I think the analogy with SNL really holds there, right? They have a studio audience, but the experience watching that show live in New York city Saturday night is okay because you’ve got the different sets and you’ve got the cameras and the costume changes and tons of cameras and they’re holding up cue cards. And, and so it’s cool to be there for sure. And it’s visceral and in the moment, but as an actual piece of art, it’s not like going to Broadway, right. Where the actual presentation of what you see in the audience is amazing. It’s not amazing at all, but yet there are a lot more people watching through the television than they are in the studio audience. And as you pointed out, the same is now true for the bananas, but that wasn’t always the case.

Cole:

understand. And I’ll tell you, one thing that we started doing is we do a VIP with a hundred people that gets to come in at 4 45, about an hour before we open the gates. And what we do is we do this rehearsal in front of them like SNL. So we’ll do the 3, 2, 2, the four 11. We’ll do all the hitters just, and I’m, I’m watching their reactions. Do they really go nuts on this? And if they do, I say let’s lean in more. And so that’s what SNL does. Great on the rehearsal at eight o’clock and they cut they’ll cut skits because it didn’t go well. And so there’s so much to learn from what they’ve done. And I think that’s where we get a lot of our, our education is from WWE. It’s from it’s from SNL and it’s from the groups that are doing live entertainment differently and better.

Hrach:

Jesse, we’ve kind of touched on this a little bit, but obviously, as you’ve been talking about in order to bring this to life, it takes a truly amazing team. And you have seen, as we’ve been talking about so much success on social, what does your social team look like and how is it structured? Because, and obviously, you know, with blocking and tackling and planning, there’s a lot that goes into this. So how is your current social team structured and, and what does that look like?

Cole:

it came about accidentally. I remember we hired an intern photographer our first season and he is taken pictures and he is good. And halfway through the season, he goes, you know, I can do videos and I go, really? He goes, yeah, yeah, I can do videos. And I go, I’d love to see what you could do. And so we came up with the idea to do can’t stop the peeling the song by Justin Timberlake that was can’t stop the feeling. And it was really big and he did this music video and he started filming our players, dance and interacting. And I remember on Facebook back at 2016, I, I, we put it out at 8:00 AM and it was like 10,000 more reviews, 10,000 more reviews, a hundred thousand views in the first 30 minutes, I was like, what is happening? And I was like, you keep making videos from now on like, this is awesome.

Cole:

I stumbled across it. And so Ben, we ended up hiring him full time. So he joined us as our full-time videographer. And then from that point, we’ve added seasonal videographers intern videographers. And now we have three full-time videographers that are with us at all times. We have a young woman who’s amazing, just does our TikTok. And then some other marketing collateral. We have a lead director over that. We have a lead creative services. So we’ve grown from four full-time people, 22 year olds and a 24 year old president to now we have 25 full-time and I think we have probably seven or so in our creative team.

Hrach:

awesome. I mean, it just, it just goes to show what can happen when you don’t sort of put people in a box and you like give them the opportunity to kind of do some cool stuff. And now you have this full fledged amazing team. And it just started with like one intern being like, Hey, I can do this

Cole:

and, and I think it’s a guideline of, of, Hey, when we, everything changed for us last summer, when we met and said, guys, we exist to make baseball, fun. Every piece of content, does this make baseball fun? Does this fit with us? And then also whatever’s normal do the exact opposite. And so when we started saying, all right, what, how are postgame interviews normally done? You know, you interview a guy on a bike on the field. And we said, could we do interviews in the showers? Could we do interviews in a bathroom stall? Could we put someone in an ice bath? Could we do? And we start asking all these questions that whatever’s normal. So our group knows if we’re gonna do something a pre-game video, a post-game video, or during game video, it can’t be normal because that’s not who we are. That’s not in our DNA.

Baer:

you think that the bananas could have become the sensation that they are before social media existed?

Cole:

good question. So I guess I’d have to reference you go to PT, Barnum and what he was able to do without any social media and just newspapers. And he found a way to create attention with everything he did at his museum first, before he even went into. So I think the answer is yes, but it’s been accelerated dramatically, same thing with Disney and what they were able to do. It it’s been accelerated by social media to go from zero to 2 million followers in two years is unprecedented at least in, in sports, what we’re doing right now. And so that has accelerated dramatically, but I think we would force ourselves to create so much attention that national media, which we’re fortunate we’re getting some of now would cover us that would, you know, continue to keep the word out.

Baer:

That was kind of my thought too, when I was ponding like, well, the globe riders did it in a pre-social media age. Right. So it’s totally doable because they

Cole:

different.

Baer:

Cole:

Because they were, they were dramatically different. The NBA used to hire the Globetrotters to play the first game of doubleheader to get fans, to actually come and watch the NBA teams. I mean, the globetroters are different now. And I think it’s because, you know, they’re having challenges, reinvent and doing it, but, but in the thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties, they changed the game. They were everything. They were the biggest thing. I mean, they had movies, they had cartoons, they had books, they were everything. And you know, it’s pretty inspirational to think how they changed the game to make it flashier more exciting. And, and I think it’s impacted NBA even today.

Baer:

you wish you only had a five man roster in terms of your travel budget.

Cole:

If we were one for, I mean, literally they’re traveling with 30 were traveling with to 120 man. We would save a lot of money. But yeah, that’s a lot easier with basketball, but we’ll, we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure

Baer:

out. You need a Marriot Bonvoy sponsorship. I know you’re not taking any sponsors, but it, to me like that’s the obvious one, you know, or Hilton or so you’re gonna work that out. Yeah.

Cole:

A couple, couple buses would help. Couple buses, maybe a, an airline we’ll we’ll work on that. Yeah. And it can’t be, can’t be advertising because again, I’m against just regular ads and has to be experiential. I know.

Baer:

we have to make it

Cole:

Baer:

and I have done a lot of strategy work for chickita banana. This is a true story. And we actually pitched Chiquita banana at one point on doing a whole thing with Savanna bananas and, and they did not go for it, but I I’m gonna take another swing at it someday.

Cole:

well, we’ll find one banana company that wants to have some fun.

Baer:

somebody is gonna is gonna be a part of it.

Cole:

I’ll tell you. And if you can’t find ’em, so we just do it ourselves. So give an example May 24th, we’re having banana Fest and we’re playing our professional teams playing our college team and we’re setting the record for most people in banana costumes. So we bought over 2000 banana costumes, everyone in the stadium imagine a huge wave of banana costumes. Like we invested in that because it’ll add to the experience that we think from social media and everything will be worth it. We don’t have a sponsor. It would’ve made it easier. 2000 banana costumes aren’t cheap, but we, we, we invest ourselves to create that experience. And hopefully it creates bigger fans.

Baer:

you go to get 2000 banana costumes. Is that just like, okay, everybody go to Amazon and get 50 each until they shut off the shopping cart or is there some sort of like wholesale banana costume people that you go with it that feels like a tricky intern assignment. Like go get 2000 of these.

Cole:

it hasn’t been easy. Yes, but we have found a provider of 2000 at a better price. It’s still not cheap, but we we’ve we’ve found our way, but yes, a lot of the assignments that we have our team work on and buying stuff is not easy assignments, but it’s worth it.

Baer:

gonna be great on your LinkedIn profile someday bought 2000 banana costumes. That’s gonna refer for that as well. Speaking of costumes for those of you looking at one of our clips in social media, Jesse is relent as always in the yellow tuxedo. Jesse’s first book about the yellow tuxedo. That is his signature move in all things, obviously at Savannah banana’s games in his media appearances on stage, Jesse’s a fantastic keynote speaker. If you had a chance to bring him into your organization or association, I absolutely recommend you do that. So the same way that I always wear a plaid suit, Jesse always wears the yellow tuxedo. How many yellow tuxedos do you have now, Jesse?

Cole:

am staying strong at seven right now. Seven seven tux seven,

Baer:

Seven. But you wear ’em all the time. Like I only wear the, the plaid suit on camera or on stage. You gotta wear ’em to like baseball games and everything else. Like you’ve gotta, you’ve got a little bit more usage outta the tuxedo.

Cole:

get some wear and tear, but you know, and I, and I still believe I’m the only returning customer@brightcolortuxedos.com. I mean, I’ve got a good, I keep getting them over there. But yeah, it’s and, but I, I get new top hats sent to me from, from time to time. So eventually I might have some, you know, partner on the yellow tuxedo. I just don’t know if there’s as much of a, a buying market out there these days.

Baer:

feel like men’s warehouse could be another, another obvious brand tie in. We we’ll work on it. Go ahead, Anna.

Hrach:

feeling like there’s some really good swanky suit energy here that maybe there’s like a podcast mash up, maybe a new TikTok channel or something between you two, like you can rate and review your, your crazy suits, suit

Baer:

with Jesse and Jay.

Cole:

great, great. Very small audience, but it’ll be a good audience.

Hrach:

don’t even know where to go from there. That was just too good. Now we gotta make it happen. CJ. See what he did.

Baer:

Yeah, Jesse doesn’t have time for that. He’s gotta go make his fortune travel around the country, playing banana ball. Where, where does this go from here, Jesse? I mean, you have broken all the rules per the book fans first and empowered action, engaged, deeply experimenting, constantly bringing energy and entertainment and eliminated friction. So how do you continue at some point, do you run out of, out of real estate to continue to break things like, you know, do, do you run out of run out of, of things to fracture?

Cole:

I think we’ll have to find out and, you know, it’s funny, I, I think about, you know, our goals and where we want to go and, you know, I never would’ve imagined this six years ago, so it’s tough to set goals, but you know, I, I have a personal goal as a kid who was fortunate to be bat boy for the red Sox when I was five years old and then sit next to Lee Smith and Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens and Jody Reed. And then when I was 20, I pitched in an all star game at Fenway park and it was the most adrenaline I ever had on a baseball field. And it was one bond. My father and I had was the red Sox in baseball. He bought a baseball facility, so I could out, and we literally went to red Sox games all the time back when it was cheap and we could afford it. It was amazing. And I have a dream and I shared with our team, I’ve shared it publicly. Within three years the Savannah bananas are gonna sell out Fenway park and I’m gonna take my dad on the field and say, look what we did, dad. And that’s, that’s part of the dream and to sell out major league stadiums and take the show all over the world.

Baer:

fantastic. I love that. And I think it’ll happen a lot sooner than three years. I think next, next summer, you can sell out Fenway at this, at this rate of rate of change. I’m super excited for it. And the book is spectacular. Friends. Hear me now, when I tell you go pre-order fans first, cuz it’s gonna sell out and then you’re gonna be bummed. And you’re gonna say, Jay, warn me, go buy it right now. You’ll get it in a couple weeks and you’ll be super excited. Hey, are you doing audiobook?

Cole:

I will be doing an audio book. Yes.

Baer:

Awesome. Jesse’s got the great pipes as well. Lots of fun. He’ll bring a lot of energy to it. So if you’re an audio book listener, as I am, you may want to dial it up on audible as well. Anna, should we give him the final two questions?

Hrach:

think we should. Jesse. We’ve been chatting a lot, but are you ready for your final two? We cannot let you go without asking you the big two.

Cole:

do it.

Hrach:

right. Question number one. If you could give a piece of advice to anyone who wants to become a social pro, what would it be?

Cole:

I’m gonna do two. I’m gonna break the role in this, but it’s in the back of our fans. First playbook. We share it with our team. Whenever we do fans first, you and fans, first orientation. It says be patient in what you want for yourself, but be impatient in how much you give to others. When you think about social media in particular, we are very impatient in what we want for ourself often, but we’re not impatient and how much we give to others. So that is that piece. And then if you really want to get good at that quantity leads to quality. Like we said, how can you experiment post, keep putting things out there, putting that, putting out there, putting out there, you will learn faster that way. And that’s what we’ve been fortunate to be able to do.

Hrach:

mean, I’m gonna take that piece of advice cuz obviously as we’ve talked about, it has clearly paid off for your approach with the Savanna bananas. So solid advice. Love that. All right. Second and final question, Jesse, if you could have a video call with any living person, who would it be?

Cole:

all right. Well, I, I will answer that, but I said the, the way I always love to go and the video call is tough for me, but I I’ve envisioned like thousands of times and I know it can’t happen. Playing catch on main street Disney with Walt Disney, like I’ve envisioned that like playing catch with him, having a conversation that can’t happen. There’s no video call and the person’s not living. So I broke the rules there. But I would actually go to and I referenced him earlier. Bob Iger, I, I, I am unbelievably inspired. His book ride of a lifetime was amazing. And knowing what he did to think so big with Disney and resurrect Disney, when it wasn’t a tough time and have the vision to work with Pixar and Steve jobs, I would be fascinated to have a video call with Bob bagger.

Hrach:

A huge, huge visionary. Did, did I read correctly that he just stepped back in for a little bit? No,

Cole:

Schultz did. Howard Schultz stepped back, did to start, but not Bob bagger

Hrach:

get back data.

Baer:

got all this ESPN coverage and, and more on the way, which is a Disney property. And I know Bob’s not at Disney anymore. I feel like you could hook up a, a video call with Bob Iger. Like I think you could make that a condition of participation pretty easily.

Cole:

one day, maybe one day work

Baer:

that. You need a better lawyer, Jesse. That’s the thing you that’s. So we here’s what we that into Marriott Bonvoy Marriot, Bonvoy men’s warehouse and a better attorney. Those are the three things we’re gonna get for Jesse Cole. In 2022, my friends,

Cole:

is, this is good.

Hrach:

Jesse, you thought this was just gonna be a simple, simple chat. Now we’ve got, consulting’s

Baer:

consulting three for me. I don’t have a Dave job anymore. Hey, say hi to Emily as well. I’m sure she’s always wondering like what is next on this crazy crazy. Talk about ride of a lifetime. She’s like, oh wait. Mm-Hmm we bought a baseball team and now this so yes. It’s pretty, pretty nuts.

Cole:

thank you. I’ll definitely go my best.

Hrach:

Jesse, congrats on everything. I’m so excited for the book. It comes out May 17th fans first change the game, break the rules and create an unforgettable experience. In the meantime, while everybody’s waiting for that to come out. Where should everybody follow you to check out the latest on you and the Savannah bananas?

Cole:

you search Savannah bananas. You’ll find us all over the place you search yellow tux. You’ll find me as crazy as that is. But I spend most of my time on LinkedIn. I love sharing the journey, sharing the stories and love to connect on there.

Hrach:

Jesse, thank you so much again for being here. This absolute, this, this episode was an absolute delight. It was, it was as bright and wonderful as your suit today,

Cole:

You guys are the best. Thanks so much. You so much.

Hrach:

Jesse. Thank you. And to our amazing listeners. Thank you all so much for being here with us as well. We love having you come back week after week. I am Anna hark from convincing convert. He is J Bair from convincing convert, and we hope to chat with you all next week on what we hope is your favorite podcast in the whole wide world. Social pros.

EP 521 – Edited (Completed 05/13/22)

by Rev.com

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