I’ve been busy carting my kids around to ball games, forensic meets, band concerts and scouting events.  It surprises me that I get to read anything anymore.  Just read a great story that the Girl Scouts of America utilized social media to assist in their cookie selling campaign this year.

My daughter has been involved in scouting for 8 years.  She gets very excited over the cookie sales. She pounds the phone the day after receiving the cookie sales sheet calling all the relatives and everyone on our Christmas Card list.  She even hit up her friends at school. (It’s yet to be seen if we will collect any money from them!)  The first weekend of the campaign she was out in the cold soliciting from the neighborhood.  I asked if she wanted me to drive her around.  She refused.  “People will buy more if they see me walking in the cold”, she informed me.  The kid already is a sales psychologist!

The Girl Scouts of the USA campaign included viral video on YouTube which linked to a microsite. The site asks visitors to enter a ZIP code to find a local troop.  According to a DMNews article the site also captured e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

Who says you can’t teach an old nonprofit a new trick!  They didn’t do a good job promoting the campaign down to the local troops.  I didn’t know about it until after the cookie sale was over.

I don’t know how well the campaign did…but I’m sure it helped spread the word, build the brand, and most importantly, sell more cookies!

Rob Trecek
Director of Business Development
rob.trecek@johnsondirect.com