It may not be direct response marketing in the purest sense, but at 1401 Arch Street, just two blocks away from the Philadelphia Convention Center where the National Center for Database Marketing Conference is being held, is a little piece of marketing history.
A plaque from the Philadelphia Historical and Museum Commission announces that “On November 11, 1932, Girl Scouts baked and sold cookies for the first time in the window of the Philadelphia Gas and Electric Co. here. This endeavor soon became a Philadelphia tradition. In 1936 the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. adopted the annual cookie sale as a national program.”
For all the industry’s automation advances, to date marketers have been hard-pressed to come up with a more-effective sales tool than a gap-toothed smile and a winning “pleeeese?”
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