The Winning Formula for Innovation is Actually… Bananas.
In my 15 plus years kicking around in innovation I have seen a few successes, a lot of failures and mostly an immense amount of frustration. In CPG specifically, it seems there have been very few exciting innovations that make it to shelf in the last 10 years. There are new flavors and forms, funny LTOs, maybe some memorable marketing. But when was the last time you walked through Publix or Target and saw something and thought, “Damn, I LOVE THIS!” Why is it so difficult to come up with new ideas? Why is it so difficult to come up with new ideas that make money?
What are we doing wrong?
A few years ago, I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and I saw a video of a baseball player doing fouetté turns during a game. Fouetté turns are a highly difficult type of spinny turn done by ballet dancers, and as a longtime ballet student I was pretty impressed by this guy, I learned his name is Zack Frongillo, nailing these turns, in sneakers, on grass and dirt. I can’t even do them during a full moon, in the studio, with ballet shoes on. I was immediately intrigued and went down an internet rabbit hole. This is how my obsession with the Savannah Bananas and Banana Ball began.
If you don’t know anything about Banana Ball here is the very brief history: It was started by Jesse Cole, former D1 baseball player, theatre student and minor league team General Manager, because he loves baseball with a fiery passion and it made him feel upset that fans who were coming to his team’s games weren’t having a good enough time to stay longer than around two hours. In his quest to make baseball games more fun for everyone, he ultimately created an entirely new sport, Banana Ball, in which the game clock is exactly two hours, the rules are a bit different, there are trick plays, fan involvement, and plenty of on field entertainment including music, dancing, stilts, and more. Banana Ball is only a few years old and there are already four teams with two more on the way. They are regularly selling out not only Major League Baseball stadiums on off nights, but selling out football stadiums, broadcasting live on ESPN and there’s a waiting list of something like 3 million people to get tickets. Safe to say, a BIG innovation success. Maybe the most impressive I’ll see in my lifetime.
What are the Bananas doing right?
Passion Beats Process.
I know this sounds crazy coming from a process facilitator, but passion wins over process every time. I have worked with so many clients who believe if they gather the right data, in the right order, in the right amount it will add up to a $50 million idea. Innovation is not like building IKEA furniture; you can’t be sure it will turn out well because you followed the instructions correctly. You need enthusiastic, excited, inspired people on the team and in the room. I once facilitated an innovation workshop and one of the clients was the CFO of a small CPG company. He had never been invited to an innovation workshop before. He was so excited to be wearing jeans, to be hanging out with a bunch of fun and creative people (ITG’s Creative Consumers® associates) in a beautiful space. He was the most excited person on the team, and he ended up writing the best concepts. You have to not only want to win, you have to love the game you are playing. If laundry detergent is your life’s passion, you might actually have a shot at revolutionizing the category.
Trying Wins Over Talking.
When Jesse was building the Savannah Bananas, he tried a lot of things to see what would work well. In his book Fans First, he talks about coming up with ideas every single day, ideating with the team every week, and trying and failing and trying again. He has a relentless goal, which is to make fans happy, and every idea he tries out is in pursuit of this goal. He is out there, game after game, watching what gets fans excited and getting to know them, so no need to do focus groups. You can ask people what their problems are, what they want, what they would buy, how much they will pay, ad nauseum, but nothing beats getting out there in the world and watching what gets people excited. Get out there.
Games To Be Played Bests Jobs To Be Done.
A lot of innovation these days is focused on solving problems or identifying “Jobs To Be Done.” While Banana Ball sure does solve a lot of the problems that plague Major League Baseball, it does a whole lot more than that. It asks, “How can we have MORE fun?” “How can we get MORE people smiling?” “How can we generate MORE excitement?” To get a transformational idea, you need a transformational goal.
Go Yard or Go Home.
This is the hardest one, because it’s the one over which you likely have the least control. Lots of great ideas die on the cutting room floor because they are too risky or the “size of the prize” is estimated by accountants to be too low. When the higher ups won’t green light projects that aren’t a sure thing, it makes innovative thinking incredibly difficult. The only thing we can do is to keep pushing our crazy, out-there ideas. Hopefully, the crazy story of Jesse Cole and Banana Ball inspires more corporations to take some risks.
Read the innovation story of the decade (maybe the century!) and decide for yourself if you are ready to Go Bananas: https://thesavannahbananas.com/the-history-of-banana-ball/