Social Media and Girl Scout Cookies: A Winning Combination

It’s an American tradition that is nearly a century old. Girl Scout cookies have been around since 1917 (just five years after the founding of the organization), as a way to raise money for local units of the Girl Scouts of America.

Sometimes “old” organizations and businesses aren’t the best at adapting to change, particularly in the area of technology. Recently a friend used both Twitter and Facebook to inquire about everyone’s favorite Girl Scout cookies. I couldn’t remember the actual names of the ones I liked, so I resorted to the web to look them up (turns out my favorites are Trefoils and Do-Si-Dos) and was surprised by what I found. The Girl Scouts are doing a pretty good job at utilizing Social Media as a marketing tool!

Back in the day, the scouts would go door-to-door selling cookies and also relied heavily on family and friends. Obvious safety concerns later spurred the scouts on to set up booths at local grocery stores and shopping centers, the idea being, rather than go to the customer, go where the customer is going to be! And while that is still standard practice, with the Internet, the scouts are now truly engaging in some serious “inbound marketing.”

If you Google “girl scout cookies” you’ll end up at the main site for the cookies. The home page features links to their Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, and YouTube pages. Interestingly enough, the main feature on that page is a “Find Cookies Now” feature: a box where you enter your zip code. In some cases you’ll be given a link to the cookie site for your local chapter. In my case, I was asked to enter my e-mail address so someone could contact me, and THEN I was routed to my local chapter’s site, which features a “Cookie Booth Locator.” I came up with a rather large list of where and when local scouts would be selling the cookies. Their online properties also give you plenty of opportunities to “tell a friend.”

As for the Facebook page, they have nearly 32,000 fans, and it’s a decent page with lots of activity. The only thing lacking is that they aren’t engaging their fans as well as they could. But they have developed a pretty nice Facebook application that allows you to send your choice of virtual cookies to any of your friends. And again, there are links everywhere to make it easier for you to find the real thing! They stay focused and on-message, and the branding is never compromised.

In addition to the need to engage their fans more on Facebook, I think the Girl Scouts could probably benefit from a robust Twitter program, but they’ll get there! Overall they are doing a great job, especially considering that cookie sales are driven from the bottom up by a large number of local groups, rather than from a centralized location at the top.

It’s no wonder the Girl Scouts are able to sell nearly 200 million boxes of cookies each year. They do everything they can to help you find them. In fact, in the email I received from them, they included this:

To achieve this extraordinary level of accomplishment, Girl Scouts use 21st-century business skills. Many design business cards, newsletters, press kits, charts and posters to support their cookie program goals. Others make formal presentations to close cookie sales with local businesses.

The Girl Scouts may be an “old-school” organization, but they certainly know what they are doing when it comes to the business of selling cookies. Big and small businesses alike could learn a thing or two from these girls.

Oh, and don’t forget to buy your cookies!

Tagged as: facebook, flickr, Marketing, MySpace, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube