How far would you go to help your child obtain a dream?
Going to summer camp may not be your kid’s dream, but it is for Bryan Freeborn’s 8-year-old daughter. So, when the North Carolina Girl Scout’s father found out that his little girl’s dream could become reality if she sold a ton of Girl Scout cookies, Freeborn put on his thinking cap.
His plan: Use the Internet to generate a record number of cookie sales.
His downfall: Not adhering to the Girl Scout’s rule banning Internet cookie sales.
Unfortunately, for Freeborn and his daughter, Wild (yes, that’s her real name), their plan crumbled after she scored about 700 orders (at $3.50 a box, that’s a lot of dough), but not before they made international headlines and were invited to speak about their “plan interrupted” on NBC’s “Today” show.
According to Bryan, he never intended to draw attention to his mild-mannered family. The web designer dad says he had honorable intentions when he created a video and posted it on YouTube in the hopes of selling enough boxes to send his daughter to summer camp. Bryan says the video was incredibly simplistic and only promoted the cookies. In addition, Wild’s father says he only took orders from people living in their hometown of Asheville so he could deliver the cookies in person.
Mind you, Wild was faced with the monumental task of selling 12,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies in tough economic times to score a free ride to summer camp (for herself and the rest of her troop), which is why it was no surprise that she turned to a parent for help. Also keep in mind that Wild’s dad doesn’t work in a large corporate office building where he can walk from cubicle to cubicle hawking Thin Mints and Samoas; he’s a web designer, who works out of his home. Therefore, he took his talents and channeled them into a YouTube video in which Wild coined the memorable line: “Buy cookies- they’re yummy.”
Seems pretty innocent to me: Bryan loves his daughter. Bryan wanted to help his daughter sell cookies. Bryan didn’t intend to end up on national TV explaining his actions.
“The whole intent was to help my daughter meet her goals, utilizing up-to-date marketing principles,” the media shy dad told Matt Lauer on the “Today” show.
Unfortunately, the tech-savvy dad didn’t read the Girl Scout rule book very well before he worked his magic on video.
A spokesperson for the Girl Scouts told NBC’s “Today” show: “We want to make sure that whatever the girl is doing is integrated into the program that she’s studying, we want to make sure we are in the development stages of a technological platform that will integrate it and be fair and equitable for all girls. But more importantly, it’s girl safety at its core.”
The Girl Scout exec acknowledged that Wild’s safety was never at risk because her father was overseeing the video. However, she noted that she couldn’t guarantee it would be the same with all children.
Long story short Wild will now have to sell the rest of her 10,000 plus cookies the old-fashioned way: wearing down shoe leather while knocking on doors of people she doesn’t know, and standing outside supermarkets cajoling cash strapped customers into submission.
What do you think of this dad’s effort to help his child?
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