The Mozilla Foundation's latest advertising campaign is already proving a success, racking up nearly half a million hits in less than a week, according to the organisation on Thursday.
The humorous online video campaign was launched by Mozilla Europe, the European affiliate of the Mozilla Foundation, last week. It is already experiencing "very significant daily growth" despite a low-key launch from the blog of Tristan Nitot, the president of Mozilla Europe.
"This is just the beginning — I only posted it on my personal blog and it's already spreading nicely," said Nitot. "We wanted to start small as we were concerned that servers wouldn't be able to handle the load."
The videos had registered 300,000 hits by the end of the weekend, and were nearing 500,000 hits by Tuesday — the latest figures that were available on Thursday, according to Nitot. The videos, hosted on the Funnyfox Web site, feature various people who seem to be having extreme reactions when they discover Firefox for the first time.
"The idea is to be funny and get people in interested in what Firefox is," said Nitot.
Mozilla Europe did not have the money to pay for an advert on television, so instead decided to host the video online and encourage Firefox fans to spread the video by email, said Nitot.
This is the latest in a long-line of high-profile marketing efforts initiated by the Mozilla Foundation to promote Firefox. Other marketing campaigns include print ads in The New York Times and a German national newspaper, both of which were paid for by the open source community. It has also encouraged local marketing activities through the spreadfirefox.com.
Talkback
I'm a big fan of Firefox, but I just don't think the ads are funny. They're not that original, they're too similar, and the humor is just too childish (not the good wacky kind, either). My guess is that almost all of the downloads are by people already converted who are just a little too ready to praise everything related to Firefox. I think the woman is cute, though.
Then you're really retarded. Go fetch!
[i]My guess is that almost all of the downloads are by people already converted who are just a little too ready to praise everything related to Firefox.[/i]
Well, [b]you[/b] were also one of the people who downloaded them to check them out weren't you?
They weren't created to make you roll over laughing, they're just *mild* humour and to promote Firefox.
Either way it's just a start! Wheather you like'd them or no, they still [b]promote[/b] the product.
What a great idea. How disappointing in execution. These ads are competent, but, blimey, if that's funny, then please, bring back Benny Hill. I think they suffer from being too 'international' - like so many ads translated from a different culture they just don't quite work. These are deliberately avoiding almost all language or cultural reference, and thus leaving the ad makers with only the lowest common denominator of humour to work with. Next time, localised ads, I suggest.
Amazing sound plots! Just listen to them. I'm sure that's an elephant in the first one. Really well done to whoever did the sound design for these.
They're funny too
Really a Funny Fox site. I can not view the flash in Firefox. I wgetted bureau.swf, and it do not play itself in Firefox either. LoL! (Yes, I am a firefox fan.)
I couldn't get sound and I'm using Firefox on Ubuntu GNU/Linux. I've seen funnier ads on mainstream Canadian TV (hope that wasn't too low a blow ;) ), but I'm glad a worthy product is getting more well-deserved--and still much-needed--exposure.
The only point of advertising is to get people to purchase/use/drum up conversation about an item. It seems to have done the job.
Using Flash (a proprietary and closed source piece of software) to advertise the use of open source software browser Firefox (very stupid!!!!). What's next? Perhaps Linux commercials made using Apple's Final Cut Pro. How about IBM making a Linux conversion presentations to (enter name of European country government here) with Microsoft PowerPoint and Windows XP?
Nothing like convincing users to embrace open source by using and supporting through the use of this software Macromedia's proprietary software. Congradulations Macromedia!! Get your *#@^ together and figure out what you stand for Firefox Europe!