Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Wild Freeborn, the Asheville Girl Scout that I wrote about for Mountain Xpress a couple of week’s ago is now the subject of a Newsweek story.
Wild is the daughter of former Asheville City Councilman Bryan Freeborn, who is chief operating officer over at Top Floor Studio, a local Web-design firm. To sell Girl Scout cookies this year, Bryan and Wild did up the social networking thing big time with a YouTube video, a Facebook sales pitch and more. But the Girl Scouts asked the Freeborn’s to take down the cut YouTube, noting the group’s prohibition of online sales.
Snippet:
The relative safety of using the Internet versus knocking on strangers’ doors is debatable. “First of all, selling things online is no less safe,” says Peter Fader, a director of the Interactive Media Initiative at Wharton, the business school at the University of Pennsylvania. “And if we want to teach our kids to be able to operate in society as responsible adults, online savviness is going to be part of the overall portfolio.”
In addition to losing a teaching moment, Fader says the Girl Scouts are missing out on a sales opportunity. “It wouldn’t even be a transition—it’d be an expansion,” he says, noting that the program could allow cookie sales online through personal Web pages hosted by area councils. With some troops reporting sales down by as much as 19 percent this year, getting online would be a simple step that could invigorate the locally minded fundraising goals of the program. “Just because you go online, that doesn’t mean you’re going to stop engaging with the girls selling in town.” Look at online retailing, which never killed the mall; or Avon Cosmetics, which, though once peddled door-to-door, can now be bought online too.
That message isn’t lost on the national Girl Scouts association, but the group’s digital strategy seems confused and behind the times. Michelle Tompkins, a spokeswoman, says, “Girl Scouts of the USA is not shunning the Internet … though we still have to figure out how to do this.” Tompkins notes that the marketing of cookies is allowed online, but sales are still verboten. She also highlighted a few other online advances, including the recent creation of a Thin Mints Facebook page and the registering ofgirlscoutcookies.org, a Web site with information on how to buy cookies from local troops.
