The Best Co-Branding Ideas with Girl Scout Cookies

In Chapter 11 we explore the ideas of social class and lifestyles. In order for companies to broaden their reach into different social classes they often times they will attempt co-branding. Co-branding is a strategy where two companies team up to promote two or more items. In my personal experiences, I've seen a lot of co-branding.

Through my elementary, middle, and high school years I was a Girl Scout. Girl Scouts of course are known for their famous cookies. Some of the classic cookie flavors are Thin Mints, Samoas, Trefoil, Tagalongs, and Do-Si-Dos. Although the cookies are pretty famous they have in the past few years ventured into quite a few co-branding agreements. All of the photos are some of the ones I have personally seen (and some I've personally tried).  

I find it interesting when something so iconic can venture into new sectors. The cookie sales aren't ass great as they used to be due to more health conscious consumers, increased prices, and the lack of Girl Scouts. I was one of four Girl Scouts in my high school, that's it. 

As you can see from the photos, the iconic cookie flavors have spread to everything from milk flavorings to candy bars! I consider many of these to be a little too far fetched for me, but someone must have purchased them.

Co-branding is such a good idea for companies that may have a little bit of a struggling time. For example, cookie season is only February through April when I sold them. This leaves a whole year with no cookies to sell. Troops had different types of fundraisers for the rest of the year, but the cookies could've been so much more. That's why I think they rolled out with all of these co-branding ideas over the year. It makes people remember the nostalgic feeling of eating a Girl Scout cookie and if it's not in season, then they can still get their fix.

Influence Marketing - Letting the Children Win

This weeks chapter was all about subcultures. There are so many subcultures that we could dive into and the people within them find themselves very influenced at times. One of the biggest influences in many families are the children. Specifically, children often times are the driving factor when it comes to impulse purchases. As we learned in this chapter, children are very much so a part of the decision making process. Today, I'm specifically discussing influence marketing - parental yielding. This is when a parent says no, but after a while the parent tends to surrender to the request of the child.

Recently, I was a local family friendly festival. There's food, games, little booths, music, and more. There's great atmosphere and beautiful weather. As I was walking around, I wondered who would spend the extreme amounts of money on the light up toys, small snacks, or light up cups. Shortly after wondering this, the answer became very apparent.

A child sees another child with cotton candy and almost instantaneously you'll hear a cry that says something along the lines of, "Mommmmm, I want cotton candy". The mother would of course reply that the child didn't need that, but of course a child is very persistent and continues to beg and plead for cotton candy. If I were to have followed this little family around, soon I'm sure I'd realize that the mother gave in to the temptation of which her child presented her with.

Although this doesn't always apply to children who want sweet foods (because some parents have defenses like offering pre-packed snacks) it is a common trend. Some parents just don't know how to handle children, or children just know how to push their parents' buttons. So, who really makes the decisions around here?

Queuing Theory at Disney World

I absolutely love Disney. There's fun rides, amazing food, and magical surprises. What isn't to love? Well, along with a large theme park comes long wait times. I'm not talking about half an hour, I'm talking about how I waited over an hour to ride a ride that was maybe a minute long. Some would say I'm absolutely crazy to be doing such a thing! An hour?! For one ride?! Well, I'm not as crazy as some people who wait over 250 minutes to go on Disney's latest ride opening. 

Although Disney is notorious for crowds and wait times, they are also one of the kings of queue lines. The queue is the line you wait in before boarding a ride. Often times at lower budgeted theme parks the queues are just chains that zigzag you all around before getting to the actual ride.

Disney has figured out that if people feel like they've waited less time than they really have, they will be more satisfied. This plays in to one of the newest buyer behavior terms I've learned called queuing theory. Queuing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines and the how that effects the perception of how what you were waiting for was. I'm applying that to Disney's wait lines today.

Now to show you what I mean by Disney being the king of queues, here are some great examples. Peter Pan's Flight is considered a classic Disney World ride. It may be one of the shortest rides in the park, but people love it. Recently, Disney redid the queue line for this ride and it's much more immersive than the previous queue. Here's a video showing you the new interactive and immersive queue line and the ride itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K-o8MfkiAQ . 

In this chart you can see that the average wait time, even on the slowest of days at the Magic Kingdom, is just under 50 minutes! So, what keeps people waiting in these lines?! The beautiful queues. As you hopefully saw in the video, the interactivity and diverseness of this queue in particular applies to children and adults. If it weren't for these added bits and pieces of magic, no one in there right mind would wait for this ride longer than 20 minutes. Here's a list of attractions with the longest wait times at Walt Disney World: http://knowdw.com/lines-guide/longest-lines-disney-world/.

I also saw in a vlog (video blog) that I was watching recently that Disney had to go to some more extreme measures to please guests. A few weeks ago, a new ride in Epcot opened. It is called Frozen Ever After and is based off of the hit movie Frozen. The first day it opened it was only opened to those who had made a Fast Pass reservation for it. Fast Pass is basically a way you can avoid having to wait in line. Well, Disney made too many Fast Pass reservations and the lines got so backed up that the wait line was outside of the entrance to the ride. To combat this feeling of wait, Disney decided to offer everyone a free candy bar. Who doesn't love candy?! This calmed guests as they looked through that immersive queue as well.

To sum this all up, Disney is the kind of queues. This is due to the fact that they know if a queue is more interactive, it will feel like they didn't wait as long as they had. If people feel like they waited less time than they did, then they will have a better perception of the ride they just rode. 

Can Marketers Really Change Attitudes?

Malls are plastered with advertisements yelling sales, clearance, 50% off, save now, buy now! As overwhelming as these might seem, we've actually become quite used to them. Advertisers are always attempting to change our attitudes about products and brands. I think that even though we have somewhat become numb to these plastered advertisements everywhere, they still work. That's right...the techniques work. Whether it be impulse buys or something else, they work. Here's some examples of how marketers can change our attitudes.

 The words "limited edition" appear on everything from collectible coins to different flavors of Oreos. Although we see a full shelf stocked full of these special lemon Oreos, we often feel like that this is our only chance to buy them. This is an example of a technique called scarcity. Scarcity is when people are more likely to be attracted to items when they aren't readily available (or don't seem readily available). Now, that I think about it, there's probably no regulation on who can put "limited edition" on packages. Marketers are clever people.

Marketers can change our opinions and attitudes when they feature special celebrities, good-looking people, or transformations in commercials. All of these are some of the ways that marketers secretly change our attitudes. Limited Edition makes things seem luxurious. Are Oreos luxurious? To some people they may be, but was that before or after the marketer?

Body Image & Consumer Behavior

Body image has become a really sensitive topic in the past few years and it's at a point where it has escalated too far. Little girls should not have to worry about what their bodies look like. They should be having fun outside instead. As Americans, we consumer so much more media than we did a decade ago and that's effecting children and adults too. Children specifically are using observational learning when looking at ads of skinny models. If they see skinny models everywhere they will start to think that that's the only way.

Recently I've been seeing body image as a trending topic on the news. I remember hearing that some studies show that children as young as 5 are saying that they have issues with their bodies. I thought the world was starting to make progress with the body positive movement. I have some articles below that share this rising trend. 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/14/europe/uk-london-bans-negative-body-image-ads/

http://motto.time.com/4378414/blogger-tiffany-brien-stomach/

As consumers, we are very influenced by what we see. Marketers know this and will play this to our weakness. Having fresh pizzas out on display means you're more likely to buy one. Same goes for body imaging. If you are on your favorite online store and see a woman that is your size modeling the clothing, you're more likely to consider it for yourself rather than if a smaller sized woman was wearing it.

I think that America has a lot of work to do when it comes to body images. We have bans on cigarette ads being near schools, but why not ban body shaming ads from children television networks? Hopefully, we will keep moving towards body positivity!