When it comes to Girl Scout Cookies, there are apparently some sales techniques that aren’t allowed:
It has been a tough year for that classic American snack, the Girl Scout cookie.
With the cost of flour, oil and cocoa rising, Thin Mints, Trefoils and Peanut Butter Sandwiches now come in smaller boxes, with two fewer cookies. Do-Si-Dos are struggling against a salmonella outbreak that has left customers wary of peanut butter. And the recession has dissuaded many from spending $3.50 on a little tray of cookies, whether chocolate, shortbread or lemon.
Add to that list of woes the name of 8-year-old Wild Freeborn.
Wild, a girl scout from Asheville, N.C., set out in January with the goal of selling 12,000 boxes of cookies, enough to win a free week of Scout camp for her entire troop. Because her father, Bryan, works in Web site development, his first impulse was to have her advertise her mission online.
She did so, and it was not long before she found herself afoul of the Scouts’ national organization, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., which forbids Internet sales of cookies. The resulting stir — innovative third grader versus Scout leadership, online entrepreneurship versus the tradition of door-to-door promotion — has drawn publicity across the country, with coverage by national news organizations and many radio stations.
“It didn’t really dawn on us that we were doing something new and innovative,” Mr. Freeborn said. “The business community in Asheville is very active on Facebook and Twitter. We were surprised that we were the first to get noticed for doing this.”
Michelle Tompkins, a spokeswoman for the Scouts, says there are good reasons for the online ban, beginning with the familiar dangers that young girls can encounter on the Web. Beyond that, Ms Tompkins says, is the issue of fairness: local councils typically award prizes to girls for reaching certain levels of sales, and since all girls are limited to selling within their local areas, a campaign like Wild’s can overwhelm opportunities for other girls in town.
Here’s the video of young Wild Freeborn’s (a first name I’m thinking her parents may come to regret in about 7 years, by the way) appearance on The Today Show:
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And here’s the YouTube Video mentioned in the report:
Seems to me like the Girl Scouts are being ninny’s here.
As a father of a girl scout and husband to a troop leader I fully support the ban on internet sales. Its hard enough to compete against the other local troops if we had to compete with sales to girls on the other side of the town or the country because of internet sales we wouldn’t be making any money for our troop. Now I personally would not be opposed to maybe advertising on the net when and where the girls will be selling the cookies in person at.
Just one more thought. Kids with active and involved parents have little to no danger online.