With a little help from a Silicon Valley dad, Facebook‘s global policy manager Jud Hoffman, a group of Girl Scouts managed to sell 400 boxes of Girl Scout cookies in about an hour, according to this story in AdAge.
Hoffman had told a few people at work–Facebook headquarters–that his daughter Greta would be selling cookies at the office with some of her friends. There was so much interest that Hoffman decided to set up a Facebook event so that people wouldn’t miss the girls and the cookies.
A few hours before the girls arrived, several people said they didn’t have cash or checks, so Hoffman decided to sign up for Square–the service created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey that can turn a cell phone into a device that accepts credit cards. Luckily, someone at the office had the necessary dongle manufactured by Square, which is plugged into an iPhone audio jack.
By the time the girls arrived, the father-daughter sales team was ready to accept credit and debit cards. Girl Scout Greta Hoffman reports that many of her customers were almost more into the payment service than the cookies themselves. “They were thinking it was really cool, they kept saying, ‘OMG, we can use credit cards to buy Girl Scout cookies! This is really cool!'” The girls even scored a tweet from Randi Zuckerberg, head of Facebook’s consumer marketing team.
This is not the only story about savvy Girl Scouts using mobile e-payment options to sell cookies, and in some cases brands, not dads, are providing the support. The Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism blog reports that Girl Scouts in northeastern Ohio were selected to use the GoPayment app and credit card reader by Intuit, who is offering use of these free and reduced costs services to Girl Scouts nation-wide in the U.S.
The Kellogg Company is supporting troops with its Cookie Locator App, which can be downloaded to the iPhone, itouch, and iPad. Chicago’s southside West Chesterfield Girl Scouts troop were the first to implement the application, which allows cookie consumers to find a cookie booth location between February 18 and March 13.
Hurry: only 5 days to go to locate your own cookies!
