Firefox, now on TV

It’s remarkable enough that the Internet has come so far that an ad about a browser isn’t out of the ordinary, but it’s even more remarkable that these ads were made by Firefox fans off their own back, and paid to air by the same.

It all started last year when the Mozilla foundation started the Firefox Flicks campaign, in an effort to drive grass-roots support and generate short, fan-made, 30 second clips. Naturally, these could be shared across the Net and drive awareness for the browser.

The program was so successful over 200 entries were submitted, and while there are plenty that wouldn’t have a hope of seeing the light of day, some are actually quite well made and genuinely entertaining.

The full list of entrants starts here and includes funny and humorous entries including this one that actually cracked me up. You’ll also find the bizarre, ninjas (can’t go wrong there), the clubby, the crazy, the animated, and I swear I know people like this. There’s even an Aussie themed entry. Take a coffee break now and watch these, I guarantee you’ll they’ll make you smile.

Recently, the foundation also asked for support to actually pay for four of these to be screened on prime time TV, including on MTV and the ESPN sports channel, with a $10US donation and the chance to have your name up in lights by being included in each ad if you got in quick. And quick they came, filling the named positions and securing the money to air the most popular ads, which you can find on the Firefox Flicks Backstage page. The ads are expected to air some 20,000 times over the next six weeks.

This isn’t the first time Mozilla has galvanised the community to get involved. At the release of Firefox 1.0, adverts in the New York Times were paid for by 10,000 Firefox fans, who each got their named included in the advert. You can see the results in this PDF of the advert here.

Entertainment aside the Firefox Flicks are interesting on other levels — that users can be inspired to participate in the marketing of a (free) product, that the browser war is (like most things) fought more in the minds of users than their PCs, and that all these considerations aside I just can’t get it out of my head that anyone would ever be inspired to do the same for IE. And it’s not about if it’s a better or worse browser, it’s simply that Microsoft isn’t cool.

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