intothefuzz

Distilled down to the basics, the goal of the Mozilla marketing department is to help people understand, adopt and continue using Firefox (as a means of supporting Mozilla’s overall mission).

To help achieve that goal, we’ve created a short messaging document (beta version…this is still a work in progress) that covers how we’ll be communicating the benefits of Firefox to the consumer audience (in other words, people who use the Internet regularly for email, shopping, news, etc but aren’t familiar with its technical workings…communicating about Firefox to our technical audience – and I suspect that’s about 95% of the people reading this blog – is an entirely different task, so if these points seem obvious to you, keep that in mind).

Obviously there are dozens of benefits that we could cover, but in the interest of making our communications as tight and to the point as possible, we chose to focus on three main points of differentiation between Firefox and the other guys. Our thinking here is that cool features, like spell check or session restore, don’t stay unique to Firefox for very long, so we wanted to go with topics that we can “own” without them being easily copied or duplicated:

1. Security: Because of well-known problems like identity theft, the issue of online security is very important to most web users. Although no browser is invulnerable, we believe that our open source process makes Firefox the safest way to browse the Internet, and this is a critical message for people to hear.

2. Customization: Many casual web users aren’t really aware of add-ons and all the possibilities they present. So, we want to educate people that web browsing doesn’t have to be a “one size fits all” experience.

3. 100% Organic Software: Working for the public benefit rather than profits is a pretty powerful concept, so want we want people to understand that this is what Firefox is all about. Because the history and structure of Mozilla is, well, a little dense, we like the idea of using this inherently non-technical metaphor to sum up our open source, not-for-profit nature.

This document can best be described as a beta release, and we’ll surely be refining it over time, so your comments and suggestions are encouraged. Even better, put these to the test on your less tech-savvy family/friends/co-workers, etc and share your findings. What are their current perceptions of web browsers? What do they look for when they choose a browser (and do they even know there’s a choice)? And do they find security, customization and 100% organic to be compelling points in favor of Firefox?

If this topic interests you, definitely check out these links:
* The complete Firefox messaging document
* A similar document about Mozilla (rather than just Firefox) explained on Melissa Shapiro’s blog
* Spread Firefox post with more information on both docs

(btw, I’ll be out of the office for about a week and a half starting tomorrow, so if you have questions, thoughts or comments about any of this just post them here and we can discuss further when I return)

At John Lilly’s request, we’ve created a new “Powered by Mozilla” logo. The idea is that companies that use Mozilla technology as the basis for what they do would proudly display this logo on their sites (or wherever it’s most relevant).

I’m happy about this because I think it will do two good things for our brand: 1) help differentiate Mozilla from Firefox (among the broader audience, there’s still some confusion around this) and 2) further establish us as an organization working on the cutting edge of a lot of cool new technology (again, beyond just being “the Firefox guys”).

Thanks to Alicia Patterson for putting this together for us.

It’s been awhile since I reported on the Mozilla Store, so here are a few updates:

* Probably the most frequent comment we got after relaunching the US-based Store back in August was, “are you going to redo the International Store too, and if so, when?” The short answer is “absolutely yes” and “very soon”. I probably should have done a better job of communicating this at the time, but updating the International Store has been part of the plan all along…work has been proceeding for a few weeks now and we’re hoping to have the International Store live in late October or early November. It’ll have the same design, features and merchandise as the US-based Store, so stay tuned…

* The good thing about the International Store is that Mozilla fans will be able to have their gear shipped to almost any country around the globe. The bad thing is that the world is a big place and shipping costs can get pretty expensive (especially when you factor in duties and taxes in certain places). We’re currently looking into a few grassroots solutions with some local Mozilla communities to combat this. I don’t have anything specific to report on this yet, but wanted everyone to know that we’re actively exploring ways to solve the problem.

* About the US-based Store, we have an opportunity to add a new item of our choosing. We figured this would be a good opportunity to let the community weigh in, so we’re putting five frequently suggested items up for a vote. David Rolnitzky’s blog has more details on this, but the quick summary is that we’ll add the winner to the Store as soon as possible. So, if you have an opinion, click here to vote, or look for this promo next time you’re at the Store homepage:

Convincing people to download and begin regularly using an entirely new web browser is a pretty tall task for an online ad, which is why we’re always testing different approaches to see what works.

We recently asked Nobox to come up with concepts for two online ads around the themes of security and customization (key points of differentiation between Firefox and the competition). The ads started running a few days ago…my esteemed colleague David Rolnitzky has a detailed breakdown of the thought process behind them on his new blog, so definitely check that out.

Our main request to Nobox for the security ad was that it be very benefits-focused…in other words, communicate how browser security (or the lack thereof) directly impacts the user, rather than just making a generic statement about what Firefox’s security features are. For the customization one, we asked them to explore some non-technical metaphors (besides the somewhat played-out one of souping up your vehicle) that would help explain what add-ons are and how they can help you.

Nobox processed all that and came back with an interesting approach: cartoons. When they first proposed this I have to admit I was a little uncertain, but they quickly sold me with their specific concepts, which communicated our key points in a very fun and engaging way. I feel like it’s important to be serious about what we do, but also not to take ourselves too seriously, and to me these ads do a good job of doing that. Of course, online advertising provides very well-defined results so the users will have the final say!

The landing page for the security ad is below. You can see the other landing page plus the ads themselves on David’s site.

High fashion comes to Mountain View: David, JT and Seth do their best Blue Steel poses and show off some potential new caps that we’re considering adding to the Mozilla Store. Which one do you like best? (the caps, not the models)