Mozilla has already done the work to return Firefox to its former glory, but now the hard part begins: Convincing people to try it. And so it is launching a media campaign that will launch during today’s NFL football games on TV.
“I kept going back to Firefox’s heyday, when the internet was really fun, weird, and interesting,” Mozilla chief marketing officer John Solomon says. “The challenge was: How do you lean on nostalgia and heritage but not be stuck in the past?”
Mozilla teamed with the We Believers ad agency to remind former Firefox users what they loved about the web browser 20 years ago is more important than ever in this age of Big Tech abuses. And so the campaign features some of the more famous people who went viral during the early web era–what we might call influencers today, but without the selling out part–to help deliver the message. Which is that the Internet should be open, accessible, and shaped by the people who use it, not just the platforms that profit from their attention and data.
I can’t say that I honestly remember any of these people–Overly Attached Girlfriend, Dancing Matt, Annoying Orange, and others–but I do remember some of the imagery associated with them. And it’s hard to argue with Mozilla’s stance that you should be able to browse the web without being tracked and profiled and choose to use AI if you want to and ignore it otherwise. Firefox is made by a nonprofit, not one of the richest companies on earth, and the product is rooted in values that matter more today than ever.
“We wanted to remind people of what made the internet so wonderful in the first place,” Solomon adds, referring to the new campaign. “These are people who helped make it strange, creative, surprising, and fun. None of them were trying to go viral. They were normal, everyday people who were using the internet. That’s the way the internet should be and why we feel it’s a great moment for Firefox. Always independent and unlike Big Tech, not trying to extract more from everyday people.”
You can learn more about why you want to choose Firefox on the Mozilla blog. And you can of course download Firefox from the Firefox website.