What can marketers learn from the Savannah Bananas?

It’s not easy to describe the Savannah Bananas to someone who hasn’t witnessed them in action. They are part baseball team, part traveling circus and 100% entertainment.

The Bananas play a game they call “Banana Ball,” which resembles baseball in many ways, but with shorter games, 11 rules you won't find in baseball and more than a hint of vaudeville thrown in for good measure.

It’s a concept almost perfectly designed for social media and online video, and that’s exactly where the Savannah Bananas built a loyal following of fans, some of whom have, for years, entered a lottery for a chance to see it all in person.

We struck up a conversation with Kara Heater, Director of Marketing for the Savannah Bananas, to talk about how the team uses a combination of video, social media and authenticity to entertain millions of fans, many of whom have never seen the team play in person.

If you think the company and products you’re marketing play in a different league than the Savannah Bananas, you’re probably right. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn from how the Bananas built a phenomenon.

Host: Mike Pastore, Editorial Director, MarTech.org
Guest: Kara Heater, Marketing Director, Savannah Bananas

Transcript

We don't need to be everybody's cup of tea in a sense.

Uh, we really like that we're able

to make the game more fast paced, more entertaining,

and just bring positivity

and fun to everyone no matter what.

It's not easy to describe the Savannah Bananas to anyone

who hasn't witnessed it.

They're part baseball team, part traveling circus,

and they're 100% entertainment born in an era

of social media when it's easier to create

and distribute video content than ever before.

And led by a charismatic leader in Jesse Cole,

the Savannah Bananas are just made for our time.

Unlike pastor editorial director at MarTech,

you might be thinking that the company you work for

and the products you, you market are

as far from the Savannah Bananas as possible.

And you might be right, but

that doesn't mean we can't all learn

something from their success.

And joining me to talk about it is Kara Heater, director

of Marketing for the Savannah Bananas.

Kara, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.

I'm super excited to chat with you today.

Alright, explain for those who are unfamiliar,

who the Savannah Bananas are

and what your responsibilities are in your role.

And just for our video viewers,

we're gonna roll some footage

that Kara's team was kind enough to share for us

because it's a little easier to see perhaps than

to explain inwards.

Yeah, so like you said, we are part baseball team,

part traveling circus.

So the Savannah Bananas are a baseball team

that plays our own version of baseball called Banana Ball.

So Banana Ball's whole goal is to make baseball fun

and make the game of baseball more

fast-paced and more entertaining.

So it features 11 different rules, some

of those being if a fan catches a foul ball,

it's an out two hour time limit, no stepping out of the box,

no bunting because everybody knows Bunting sucks.

Um, and the golden batter rule where you can, uh,

once a game use a, a golden batter

and put 'em in anywhere in the lineup no matter who they are

or or where they hit in the lineup.

Uh, so it's a lot of fun.

So we do a lot of entertainment during our games as well

as play a full fledged baseball game in two hours.

So you'll see run celebrations

where the players will score a run and come to home plate

and do a full TikTok dance,

or we'll do crazy Player Walkups where a guy is walking up

to the plate lips singing along to Taylor Swift,

one direction, all the crazy things.

Um, so it's a lot of fun.

It keeps the day to day interesting every single day.

Um, but yeah, that's a little bit about the bananas.

And then my role as marketing director here is kind

of overseeing everything that goes out on social media.

So I work alongside the rest of our marketing team

and our video team,

and we work closely with the entertainment team here as well

as, um, the, the players themselves to come up

with all the crazy ideas and,

and content that you see going out on social

media on a daily basis.

So it's everything from idea generation to execution

to then following up on posting and reviewing analytics

and all of that good stuff.

And maybe, you know, the, the proof

that you guys have have touched the nerve is that a few

of the things you talked about are making their way

into Major League baseball.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting to see, uh, we've got,

we've got a lot of feedback, some good, some bad from

what we're doing with the game of baseball,

and we know we're not everybody's

cup of tea, and that's okay.

Uh, some traditionalists really don't like what we're doing,

but we think that, uh, we, we don't need

to be everybody's cup of tea in a sense.

Uh, we really like that we're able

to make the game more fast-paced, more entertaining,

and just bring positivity

and fun to everyone no matter what,

if you're watching on social media

or if you're at the game in person.

All right. So you are marketing a product,

and I alluded to this in my intro that's almost perfectly

designed for the age that we live in

with video and social media.

Tell us a little bit about how you use those formats

and those channels to engage with your audience.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's everything for us.

Uh, obviously social media is so huge, like you said,

in this, this new, this era I guess you could say.

Um, and so we utilize it as much as we possibly can.

Uh, so the, the big things we do is

post content on a daily basis for each of our teams.

Uh, that's simply just for fans to enjoy.

So we utilize each platform.

So TikTok, Twitter threads, Facebook, Instagram,

YouTube, think, I think I covered all of 'em there.

Um, we utilize those on a, on a daily basis

to post content for our fans.

Um, I think what's interesting is

how each platform is different in a sense.

So you really have to know how your audience shifts

between each of those platforms.

So for us on TikTok, we know, for example,

that it's a much more Gen Z

and younger audience, whereas

Facebook is a little bit older, uh, of an audience as

compared to TikTok or even Instagram.

Um, so it's interesting to be able to, to know those things

and utilize 'em when it comes to figuring out

what content we're going to post on those platforms

because something that might work on TikTok might

do terribly on Facebook

because it's just doesn't make sense for

that audience or that platform.

So it's really cool to be able to adjust our content

to fit each platform and fit each audience.

Um, and I think it's super important to also pay attention

to what the apps are pushing.

You know, there's constant changes in each platform's

algorithm and new features.

And we've noticed that anytime

that an app is putting out a new feature, we really need

to utilize that because they're wanting you to,

so they're gonna reward you for utilizing it.

So for example, TikTok put out a new photo slideshow, uh,

feature a couple months ago, and we've been utilizing that

and seeing some really great, uh, responses

and analytics on that side of things.

So it's really cool to, to be in tune with the things

that the acts are coming out with, uh, so that we know

what new features we can test and experiment with.

All right. So you are, in addition to a marketer,

a consumer like all of us, probably in both your business,

your B2B Life and your personal B2C life.

Mm-hmm. What do you wish other marketers could take from the

work that you and your team do

or from the marketing that's effective for you guys

and incorporate it into their work?

I think the biggest thing that we do,

and a big thing that I enjoy when I'm consuming media myself

is making sure that all of our content is authentic.

So we really want it to feel like we're almost breaking down

that fourth wall and that we are best friends with our fans

and not just relying on them to make purchases.

That's never the intention.

Our mission statement is fans first entertain always,

and we make sure we do that with everything that we do.

So when we're actually putting out a piece of content,

we ask ourselves three questions.

One, is this fans first

or mission statement two, does this make baseball fun?

Which is our whole bowl and banana ball.

And three, is it shareable?

So if this is something that we're not proud enough

to share on our own personal social media pages,

why would we be proud enough to share it on a page

with a couple million followers?

Um, so we're really looking at authenticity

in, in everything that we do.

So a lot of that comes back to kind of call

to action versus non call to action post.

So if you look at our pages, 95% of

what we post has absolutely no call to action.

Uh, we realize people don't come to our page

to want to be sold.

They want to feel valued, is the best way to put it.

So with our content, we're, we're strictly just trying

to be authentic and spread positivity in the world

and in a way of making baseball fun and,

and doing crazy things on a baseball field

that nobody has ever seen before.

So I think authenticity is where we've seen a lot

of success, and that's where I personally like

to consume is, is when content is very authentic

and it's not all this super posed, highly produced stuff.

So stuff, yeah. You listed off

all the big social media

channels a couple minutes ago, right?

Mm-hmm. But is there one marketing tactic or channel

or creative idea that you haven't used in your work

that you'd just love to try?

I think for us right now, threads is actually pretty new.

We've kind of just started putting a real effort into it,

and I'm super excited alongside our team to,

to put a little more bandwidth behind threads.

It's been increasing in users

and engagement every single month,

and I think it'll be a really cool way to continue

reaching a brand new audience that maybe we haven't touched

before in a new way.

So I like the fact that it's kind of a hybrid of Instagram,

Twitter, and Facebook all in one.

So we're really excited to start pushing on threads a little

bit more and see what that can do for us.

Um, in terms of creative ideas, I mean there's a, a zillion,

if I'm being completely honest, uh, we have

what we call OTT sessions during the season

where we meet once a week

and we're just pitching the crazy ideas to

that we implement into the games,

and one that we have pitched for years now,

but we just don't know how to figure out is the player

actually skydiving into the field for a game.

So the pitcher starting pitcher gets announced and he comes

and jumps out of a plane, has a ball in his hand,

so the second he lands on the ground,

he actually throws the first pitch at a game.

So there's tons of creative ideas like that

that we definitely want to try.

Another one is putting a bull in the bullpen.

So a player doing a full bull riding thing

before it might have to be inflatable,

but you never know, we'll make it up one day.

Um, there's a ton of creative, cre creative

and crazy things that we've wanted to do

and just haven't, haven't put the,

I guess haven't put the resources into it yet.

'cause some of 'em are a little tougher to, to find a bull

that somebody will give to you.

And, you know, safety is a big concern in mouth, so Sure.

You need the mechanical bull from a bar. Yeah, exactly.

Um, yeah, those of us who are old enough

to remember the 1986 World Series will remember someone

parachuting into Shea Stadium in the middle of a game.

If you're not old enough, good

for you, go find it on YouTube.

So, uh,

there's probably marketers out there thinking, gosh,

it's easy to market a product like the Savannah Bananas.

Everybody wants to see them.

And that begs a question, what are the biggest

challenges you face in your job?

I think for us, it is the things

that are out of our control.

I know that sounds very broad and generalized,

but I think sometimes people forget

that it is a live baseball or live banana ball game.

Our games are not scripted like some people believe.

Um, our games are,

what's scripted is who's doing a crazy lip syncing walkup

and what run celebrations are coming

after they score the first run or second run.

But what's not scripted is who's gonna hit a home run

that game, and how many strikeouts the pitcher's gonna

throw, and ultimately, who wins the game.

Um, so obviously we have a lot of things

that are scripted on the entertainment side for games, but

because it is a live banana ball game,

things go wrong all the time, and that's okay.

So that's something that we've learned to kind of work

around and adapt to.

So if something goes wrong

or we can't get to something, we do have to kind

of take a step back

and say, okay, well there goes

what content we were gonna put out tonight.

So now we have to adjust and kind of go back and,

and look at what else we captured during this game so

that our video team can edit

and our social team can get it out on social media.

Um, because we found that quick turnaround works really,

really well for us, and we always wanna be the first

to post the crazy things that happen at our games.

Um, so I think the fact that it is a live game can,

can throw some curve balls at us, pun intended.

Uh, quite often it's pretty fast paced.

And then I know I talked about it a little bit earlier,

but the ever-changing world of algorithms

and social media will always pose somewhat of a, a problem.

Sometimes it's, it's tough

to keep up sometimes on all the crazy things

that are changing to Twitter or XI guess I should say,

and threads and Instagram

and all these new platforms and features being put out.

So we really have to make sure on our end

that we're staying on top of all the things

that are trending constantly, uh,

because we know those always win

and all the changes that are happening in the world

of digital media and digital marketing.

Um, so I would say those are some of our, our biggest, uh,

biggest setbacks sometimes, but it also adds some fun to it.

I know that sounds cheesy, but it is fun than coming to work

and not know what to expect exactly.

Every single day you, you're getting something different,

which is really fun and keeps it fresh.

Kara Heater, director of marketing for the Savannah Bananas.

Thanks for joining us. Thanks so much for having me.

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