100 Years of Girl Scouts Selling Cookies

2017 marked 100 years of Girl Scouts selling cookies. That’s 100 years of Girl Scout troops raising money for annual activities, camping, and community service projects. The marketing plan was divided into three parts:

1) Celebrate our history by launching a brand new cookie that taps into our story - the Girl Scout S’more. The first official recipe of record of the s’more is written in the 1927 Girl Scout handbook.

2) Launch the Powered By Cookies campaign to better explain how girls use the money they earn every cookie season to increase troop participation in the Cookie Program (especially among new troops) and drive traffic to our Cookie Finder app to increase sales throughout the season.

3) Create a Cookie Troop 100 sweepstakes to celebrate individual troops who are already participating in the Cookie Program and using their cookie earnings to do amazing things.

Platform: GSUSA Facebook, GS Cookies Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Wyng (sweepstakes/contest platform)
Audience: Girl Scout members/parents, Girl Scout Cookie customers, foodie PR
Results: The 4-month campaign raked in over 44M impressions (the bulk generated the first 2 months when most areas are in cookie season) and over 1.4M click-throughs.

By connecting the 100th anniversary with our Powered By Cookies message we were able to keep traffic to our Cookie Finder app steady, despite not having ad dollars to put behind it like previous years. This message also made it easier for local councils to explain how the Cookie Program works to new members and helped drive more participation in the program at the local level overall.

The Cookie Troop 100 sweepstakes was also a record success with just under 500 troops participating (average troop size is 12 girls). This sweepstakes also gave my team the building blocks to develop the Cookie Pro contest for 2018.

My Responsibilities

  • Led campaign strategy from start to finish.

  • Content creation: social toolkits for both national and 112 councils, graphics, UGC portal, and blogs.

  • Community management: finding and sharing stories that aligned with campaign goals.

  • Aligned with PR partners on strategy and execution.

  • Reported and presented campaign results—both to national executives and 112 council leaders.

  • Monitored day-to-day social.

  • Approved submissions.

  • Drafted legal language.