google following firefox's marketing lead (years later)

More than three years after Mozilla's community produced hundreds of amazing Firefox television ads and then rallied to fund their placement on TV, Google has produced a few ads of its own and is using its own ad network to air them.

I'm obviously partial to the Firefox ads which were generated by our amazing community and I think they not only beat the Google ad in terms of inspiration but also in production quality. (There's something genuine in them that's missing from Google's professionally produced content.) Some of you may remember Daredevil, Whee!, and This is Hot. Well, those were just a taste of all the great ads that made their debut way back in the Firefox 1.5 era. If you'd like to see more, head over to Firefox Flicks and check out a couple hundred additional spots :-)

Firefox really is a pioneer in terms of grass-roots, community-based marketing for software. It was Spread Firefox, almost five years old now, that really launched the ideas that so many other companies and organizations employ today. Chris Beard, Bart Decrem, Blake Ross, Chris Messina, and countless others don't get nearly enough credit for inventing Spread Firefox and revolutionizing how software reaches users. And Mary, David, Alix, John, Jay, Jamey, Paul, Melissa, Otto, Ken, Tara, (I'm sure I'm missing a few) and the tens of thousands of other Spread Firefox contributors over the years since have continued to break new ground designing, building, and launching some amazing community campaigns.

The New York Times ad, Firefox at 50 Million, Firefox Flicks, the Firefox Crop Circle, Mozilla Campus Reps, Operation Firefox, Mozilla 24, Download Day 2008, Firefox Affiliates, the Community Store, and many more community marketing efforts like those have set a high bar for the rest of the industry.

It'll be interesting to see if the other browser vendors continue to follow our lead here. I certainly think it's a great improvement from the "old ways" and I couldn't be more proud to have played a role in helping to usher in this new era of engagement and participation in marketing.

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