PKB

We’ve got a simple goal for the year.

We want to significantly increase the number of people using Firefox, so that more people can experience the benefits of having a choice in how they get on the Web.

If we can do this, we’ll be doing our part to ensure the Web is accessible the same way to everyone, regardless of the browser or operating system they happen to be using.

Part of the reason Firefox has grown from zero to tens of millions of users is the marketing we’ve done to date. The grassroots, word of mouth marketing led by our community of users has helped introduce millions of people to Firefox.

Take a walk through the recent past of Firefox marketing:

• The New York Times ad campaign
• The Spread Firefox affiliate program
• Positive recommendations on blogs
• Vacation installations of Firefox on your parents’ computer
• The Firefox Flicks Ad Contest

There’s no doubt in my mind that the marketing we’ve done to date has been effective because it’s been rooted in the goodwill of our community.

As we gear up to market Firefox in 2006, we need to tap into this goodwill again, to reach a much bigger potential community for Firefox. As part of this, reaching those people and organizations who share Mozilla’s philosophy of doing work for the public good. We also want to figure out how Mozilla can actively help these groups. Details to come soon on this approach.

A core premise in reaching out to these new groups of potential users is that the methods that have worked for us in the past need to be augmented. We think there’s some fundamental work we have to do to make people aware of who Mozilla is, and why a choice in Web browsers matters.

So we plan to launch several educational campaigns about Firefox over the next few months.

Some of these campaigns will take shape as new community-based marketing projects. Others will take the form of broader outreach campaigns that will feature both Mozilla and Firefox. The goal of both the community marketing and broad outreach campaigns is to help people understand what Mozilla stands for as an organization, and what Firefox is.

We’re going to integrate both of these efforts. The broad outreach we do will connect in meaningful ways with the new set of community marketing we’ll be doing. We’ll also incorporate operating principles from our open source development process into the ways that we plan, implement and measure the success of all our campaigns.

We have a lot to learn on the marketing side of the house from the folks on the development team.

Open source development shifts the nexus of value creation from ownership of a proprietary set of bits, to the creativity you bring to harnessing the potential of a common asset. As open source software has come into maturity we’re seeing second order benefits that are directly impacting the Web. Startups can get from idea to delivery that much more easily because they are building upon the freely available work of the Linux, PHP and MySQL development communities. And the innovation that’s resulting from this path is everywhere you look on the Web today.

Where is the similar innovation in marketing? How do you shift the focus of marketing from branding, slogans, feature/benefit discussions, and onto the direct communication of who you are? And do it in a way that is additive to the lives of the people you’re reaching, rather than just another distraction in the mental environment?

At the end of the day, we’re going into this effort with a clear understanding of what’s made us successful to now. A clear understanding of what our strengths are as an organization and a community. And a clear understanding of the challenges we face this year in reaching our goal of a much bigger community of Firefox users.

The spirit of what makes Firefox great is that it’s made by people who are passionate about making the Web experience better for other people. We’re going to honor this spirit in the marketing that we do in 2006.

Let us know how we’re doing.

It’s been a long while since I’ve posted. No relaxation spa treatment involved, just a bunch of work that needed to get done.

When you’re part of Team Mozilla, and you’re up, your plate gets filled. Such is life.

Here’s a report from the field. Mostly personal.

• We’re close to final on the Firefox marketing plan for 2006. Yes, Beavis, it’s mid-February. ;-) I just got done sharing it, and getting feedback here and abroad. We’re close enough to start rolling things out next week, including getting community feedback. Check Spread Firefox for updates.
• I like the Flickr Motivator toy. I remember this meme, back in the day, from Despair, Inc. and kept trying tonight to figure out a good personal photo to match to my favorite Demotivator. I failed. Poetic justice.
• And, last add, post-conversation with John today, let me close with a relevant Hunter S. Thompson quote:
  

  “History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.”

So it took way longer than we thought it would, but today we added links to international Mozilla Web sites to the footer of each page on mozilla.com.

A couple of notes.

As we’ve said before, this is a temporary solution to serving up localized Mozilla Web content. The longer term solution should bring together the international product content hosted at mozilla-europe.org, mozilla-japan.org, and mozilla.org.cn under the mozilla.com domain. But this is a bigger project than we can take on right now. We’ll look at this for the Firefox 2 launch timeframe.

The footer links for all pages except mozilla.com/firefox and mozilla.com/thunderbird point to the home pages of each international site. For the Firefox and Thunderbird product pages, the footer links point to the localized main pages for both products.

Thanks to everyone who gave feedback to us along the way.