An increasingly common marketing strategy for anyone looking to get the word out about something is to use social networking sites. At the moment, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are the most common vehicles for spreading messages about everything from what your favorite celebrity is eating for lunch to getting a discount on something at a retail store. Even small businesses are using this free form of marketing.
This year, a Girl Scout used You Tube to promote her cookie sale. The video started with her stating her full name, then saying that she wanted to sell 12,000 cookies and why she wanted to sell that many. On one hand, it is an innovative way to sell more cookies. On the other hand, a young girl is saying her full name in a video, doing what some could argue as potentially risky online behavior.
The Girl Scout and her father went on the Today Show with a representative of the Girl Scout organization. Watch this segment of the Today Show and let us know where you stand. Do you think Girl Scouts should be able to market themselves online in any (tasteful) way to sell the cookies? Or should they be barred from online promotion or sales for the sake of safety?
Girl Scout Cookie Debate
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sandy (Your Life, Organized) 3-29-2010 @ 9:21AM
I think that there are many ways to sell cookies but putting your daughter on the internet and breaking the safety code of GS is not the right way.
I think she had a wonderful idea to take her entire troop to summer camp but they should have found a safer way.
www.aboutone.com
Reply
Larry 3-30-2010 @ 8:11AM
She not only put herself in danger by revealing her full name, but she would have eventually had to give a location for someone to send their payments for the cookies. This would have put her at extreme risk. Even with her full name revealed her parents now have to worry just who saw this and what are their intentions.
This is not the only story of children s' information being broadcasted over the internet. I know of a business website of a photographer that is displaying the photos, first names, last names, parent s' names, birth dates, and surrounding these photos with photo sets of cities that have to be where these kids are located. I have been arguing with her for months to stop the broadcast, but have had only limited success. Success, she finally stopped using the children s' names as search tags. This was having these children showing up in searches all over the World Wide Web.