Picture this growth marketing nightmare: Take a failing sports team that nobody cares about and turn it into a phenomenon that sells out NFL stadiums. No traditional advertising, no celebrity endorsements, no VC money.

You’d probably start updating your LinkedIn, right?

Well, Jesse Cole got handed exactly this challenge and somehow turned it into the world’s most successful growth experiment. Disguised as a baseball team. With a guy who plays on stilts.

What started as a team so broke they overdrafted their bank account now has a 3+ million person waitlist. For baseball. In 2025.

Every single thing they did is pure growth marketing gold.

When your product sucks, blow up the product (not just the funnel)

Most of us A/B test button colors. Jesse Cole A/B tested an entire sport.

The problem: Fans were leaving games early. His hypothesis? Maybe baseball itself was broken for modern audiences.

His solution? Banana Ball, where every boring rule gets flipped:

• Two hour time limits (nobody has four hours for anything)
• Walks become “sprints” where batters can get thrown out (the most boring play becomes appointment viewing)
• Fans catching foul balls = automatic outs (congrats, Karen, you’re part of the game now)

Result: 100% game completion rate. Nobody leaves early anymore.

Sometimes the best growth hack is admitting your product needs more than optimization—it needs a complete reimagining.

They built a viral content factory

The Bananas didn’t hope for viral moments. They systematically engineered them.

The “3-2-2” system: Every game, 3rd inning, 2nd batter, 2nd pitch = choreographed dance moment. 300+ million views later, they’ve cracked the code.

The genius:

• Fans know when to get their phones ready
• Perfect TikTok-length content
• Different dance every game = infinite variations
• Multiple fan angles = exponential reach without ad spend

One 30-second dance generates more organic reach than most companies’ entire social budget.

The $7 million “mistake” that was actually brilliant

When their ticket lottery glitched and disappointed 40,000+ fans, most companies would send an “oops” email.

The Bananas? They gave away $7 million in free tickets to everyone affected.

That’s Super Bowl commercial money. That’s “maybe we should think about this” money.

But those 40,000 disappointed customers became 40,000 brand evangelists who will tell this story forever. The “loss” became their biggest word-of-mouth campaign ever.

Content that actually sells itself

Most content marketing is shouting into the void. The Bananas created content that literally sells tickets.

The flywheel: Unique entertainment → Fan content → Virality → Demand → Better budget → Even more unique moments.

The results:

• More TikTok followers than all MLB playoff teams combined
• Stadium sellouts without paid ads
• They turned customers into their entire marketing department

How to scale without getting boring

Most companies scale by getting generic. The Bananas scaled from one city to 40+ cities while getting more entertaining.

Their secret: Scale the system, not the standardization. Every city gets the same quality, not the same exact show.

What you can steal from this madness

Make demos shareable. Your product demos should be so good clients want to show colleagues. Make your wins LinkedIn-worthy.

Engineer your wow moments. The Bananas didn’t accidentally go viral—they systematized it. Map your customer journey and build “I need to tell someone about this” moments.

Build community, not just customers. Make being your client make them look smart to their network.

Question your industry’s playbook. Everyone demos the same, prices the same, onboards the same. What’s your “Banana Ball” version?

The bottom line

The Bananas prove the most powerful growth doesn’t come from optimizing what everyone else does—it comes from completely reimagining what growth looks like in your space.

Instead of competing for attention, they created new reasons to pay attention. Instead of buying customers, they built systematic reasons for customers to recruit other customers.

The formula: Question everything + systematize the magic + invest in relationships + scale through systems.

Whether you’re fighting for startup survival or reigniting growth, the Bananas prove that sometimes the sanest strategy is to get absolutely bananas with your approach.

In a world where everyone’s using the same growth playbook, maybe it’s time to throw out that playbook and strap on some stilts.

Ready to become the Bananas of your industry? Let’s talk.