Girl Scouts Seek an Image Makeover†

Green Skirts Are Out as Organization Faces a 'Nonjoiner' Society

Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2008 — The cookies will stay, but the green skirts are history.

The Girl Scouts, seeking to reverse declining troop numbers, is shaking up its image. On Tuesday, the organization is expected to announce the appointment of its first chief marketing officer, a former senior partner and executive group director at WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather.

Laurel Richie will be in charge of modernizing the image of the Girl Scouts, which is viewed by many as a rigid, old-fashioned organization focused on cookie fund-raisers and campouts. "Girls think of us as outdated," says Kathy Cloninger, chief executive of Girl Scouts of the USA. "They have stereotypes of who we are that are not right."

Girl Scouts Take Cookies Into Digital Age†

You Can Even Search by ZIP Code!

Advertising Age, February 21, 2007 — After 90 years of shilling Thin Mints door to door (and at card tables set up in the local grocery store, Wal-Mart, etc.) the Girl Scouts are going digital to promote their annual cookie drive, blanketing all the websites de jour — YouTube, Grouper, Friendster — and racking up the friends on MySpace.