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Firefox New York Times Ad Hits the Presses
Dave writes "The long awaited New York Times ad for Firefox has finally hit the presses. Because of the vast number of donations the ad covered two pages of the newspaper. It's being timed to coincide with 11 million downloads."
Does anyone have a higher resolution image so I can actually read the names.
-- john
It'll be interesting to see exactly how much this (wonderfully designed) ad will affect the number of downloads over the next few days. Here's to hoping this makes a difference with all the Joe User's out there.
...we could start a fund raising project to run a full-page ad for Lynx?
This way to the egress...
One has to wonder, will 'Monkey' Ballmer and his gang of miscreants reply to this? Will we see a big 'IE. Get with the program.' on the next days? They cannot let this stand...
j.
wow
I was a little apprehensive as to how the ad would turn out, but I think the result is not only an eye-catcher, but very classy.
Kudos to the Mozilla team!
I can't get to the spreadfirefox.com site (damn /.) but from the summary, it sounds like the ad went out today. I thought we (donaters) were supposed to get a little pre-warning before it went out so we could actually head out and buy the paper.
Argh.
Spinning newspaper injures reporter.
Unknown host pong.
I looked at the PNG linked to in the posting, and i have to say, I wasn't very impressed. It sounds like something written by a bunch of open source programmers.
They refer to the people who've downloaded it as "users". While, yes, they are users, I think the majority of the web browsing population doesn't use the term "user" when referring to themselves. Something like "... 10 million people from around the world..." would've sounded less geek-like.
Heck, a lot of people don't even separate the "web browser" as something that is distinct. They think of the web as the Internet, their monitor as their computer, their case as their hard drive, etc.
The ad did focus on the spyware, crashes, etc. which is good -- but, IMHO, they just didn't do it in the "average computer users" tongue.
Microsoft has purchased the New York Times Company (NYT) and as a celebration of their new found synergies has decided to cancel today's printing. Bill Gates, reached via telephone, remarked "Oh, did we buy them... I didn't notice. I hope Steve [Balmer] remembered to use by Diner's Club Card for that acquisition."
But I wonder how much this will affect the number of worms/trojans that start affecting Firefox vulnerabilities. I think Firefox is superior to IE, but it has enjoyed staying out of the spotlight enough to avoid the attention of malware writers.
I love the ad! I especially like the hidden image on the first page (stare at the page long enough with uncrossed eyes and "IE Sucks" will appear in 3D). Was this a clever easter egg or just an attempt at semi-subtle subliminal advertising?
Here is a link to the folks behind the ad. Including a PDF version, a poster you can buy...and a place to put in the correction if they mis-typed your name.
That an advertisement, usually despised here, on the NY Times, a paper which cannot be linked here without some childish comment regarding registration is now A Good Thing(TM) on /.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Read the very bottom of Page 2 of the NYT Ad. There you will find your answer.
What do you guys think they used as the font/size for all those names? That's like EULA sized print!
--Which would not exist at all without community enthusiasm and support. These are POSITIVE things. Why do some people have a problem with this?
Your stick is in the mud.
-FL
I'm right at the bottom of the paw. It's cool that they had enough money for two pages, but it might have been better to have spent the extra money on a different publication.
-- john
Mozilla.org has been New-York-Times-dotted today, when hundreds of thousands of readers tried to download the open source browser Firefox...
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
What effect will Firefox's growing poularity have on its future vis-a-vis security? Does it become a more inviting target for malicious coders? Do any of you out there know if Firefox is written well enough to withstand such attention? I've been using Firefox since V.08. and I have watched with growing concern as its popularity has increased. Wether justified or not, I felt a little safer with this browser when less people were using it.
Regards,
JP
The facts expressed here belong to all, the opinions to me. The distinction between fact and opinion is yours to decide.
I am thrilled that an open-source product has the popularity and support to achieve such an incredible goal. I don't remember any OSS product ever having so much exposure, Linux itself not withstanding.
I personally have converted at least five people at work and several other friends to Firefox, all of whom have nothing but praise for it. Any web sites that I maintain now say "Designed for use with Firefox" with a link.
Regarding the comments about "Who reads newspapers at this time of year" and so forth, you need to remember that the NYT is reprinted and read all over the world. This is not just a single newspaper in a single city. The NYT is also highly respected (not that it really deserves it), so a lot of people will read it.
The next step IMHO should be USA Today. That too is a globally printed newspaper and usually has a different reader base than NYT.
My only concern in that they might have set a precedence with including names of donors. Let's face it. How many of you who donated did so more (not only, but more) because of the "coolness" factor of having your name printed instead of the core purpose of supporting a great browser?
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
You can download the pdf version from:
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/
There also a link there to the mozillastore where you can order posters.
It's my understanding a free copy of this ad is being included with every copy of the New York Times.
High-res, too. One day offer only, though.
Most of the readers will be unaware that Firefox does not suffer from the security problems that IE does. They may simply answer the question: "Are you fed up with your web browser?" with: "Nope. works fine"
I was honestly surprised to see 'nothing to lose' instead of the more likely 'nothing to loose' in the ad.
This should do wonders for the NYT. I know I'm going to go out and buy a copy.
Badass Resumes
Mozilla needs a better way to get updates to Administrators. I love the product and use it all the time at home and work. I also mention it every chance I get. But it needs a way to get patches installed, instead of reloading the whole product or figuring out what files need replaced with a folder compare. What say ye!
Regis Tration-Required
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
I disagree. It is true that there are a lot of web savvy users that read the NY Times, but, speaking from my experience of people I've migrated to Firefox, you'd be surprised about the number of them who had maybe *heard* of it, but hadn't given it enough thought to give it a try. Perhaps this will give them enough of a push in the right direction so that they will actually give it a try. It's hard to motivate someone to go out to a webpage and download a piece of software to replace an existing piece of software, especially when they still don't have a clear picture of how much better the replacement is. It's like convincing someone to change to a newer, better tasting cereal, when lots of them really are quite happy with the cereal they have... If only they'd try that new cereal, though, you know they'd be hooked.
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
The SFX team provided a page for misspelled names and typos.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Duh...I meant A34-35. Maybe I'll try hitting the preview button this time.
"Browser War Continues: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit."
All the names are in alphabetical order, so it's not that hard.
---
"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
"Hi, I'm Al Gore, inventor of the internet. When I'm surfing the web, I like to use a little program I invented called Mozilla Firefox. It's got moxie!"
I just got my copy from CVS pharmacy in the Washington, D.C. area. The ad is on A24-A25 in my copy.
While this ad is ok, I have ask what do the second, third and fourth advertisement look like? When will they run? How long will they run?
In order to market this product, perhaps a long term campaign that stresses all the ways Firefox will make interent browsing easier would be good.
One ad can simply state: "No pop up ads. EVER" with the firefox logo and link to download it. Another ad could highlight the best, most useful extensions. I think the weather update/forecast extension would be perfect for this.
Also: Are there ANY ads appearing on the NYT website, or any other high traffice website? This would make it easy to download the program.
it's where aaallll the cool kids go for coffee
what the heck are *you* doing there, then?
For those who haven't seen it in print yet, the ad is on pages A34 & A35.
I still recall the day when IBM announced the PC and DEC ran the ad "Welcome to the club"...
I expect the rest of my IT career will involve using Free/Open Source software more and more...which is fine with me. I like stuff that works and works well.
(By the way, I am one of those folks who can kill Novell networking software just by logging on...wish I had the same talent for Windows...)
Supreme Granter of Doctor of Obviology Letters ("A FIRM Command of the Obvious")
It might have been better to have the two pages appearing with an ordinary page of text in between them, for example, the page of names first, then in a page's time, the main advert.
This would mean that skipping it was less likely, and there was a bit of foreshadowing: hopefully the reader's curiosity at this list of names and something called "Firefox" would make them pay attention to the main advert when they then turned to the next page and saw it.
---
"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
Actually, most people *are* fed-up with Internet Explorer. It might be allowing pop-ups once a minute, or not displaying certain websites correctly (most often https), or just behaving slowly.
I've worked on 758 help requests for college students living in dorms since September. I'd say about 20% of them had problems that were simply solved by installing a copy of Firefox, nothing more. Many of these students are sold on the idea of Firefox. They do their own advertising... I've watched the most non-technical students advocate Firefox to the kid across the hall.
Last night I got a call from a user who could pull up yahoo.com, but after entering a simple search, the page would load and give some web server error. She went to Help->About, and clicking "OK" wouldn't close the dialog box. This was with an updated version of IE. Got her to go to mozilla.org, and the green "Download Now" section wouldn't display. After linking directly to the mozilla suite, and getting that installed, she was able to properly view webpages.
Out of the 758 students I've dealt with this semester, and the equally high number I've dealt with in the past 3 years at this job, only twice have I seen a resident contact us saying that Firefox won't load a certain page.
All those webpages with ActiveX controls..... the everyday user doesn't care about them. And slashdot not loading properly, I think we all know why that is.... its reporting itself as HTML 3.2 and still gets 116 errors from http://validator.w3.org/
Dunno about you, but when I see a full page add coming up on the next page of whichever newspaper I'm reading, most of the time I skip the entire page because I know there isn't an article to read on that page.
Perhaps they would have done better with many small ads on a number of successive pages. That is what Audi is doing now in the Wall Street Journal, and I'm more aware of their ad than any others.
Being a poser, duh. The hipster scene is up-and-coming down south, and I'm trying to get in on the ground floor. It's like the dot-com bubble all over again, but you get girls instead of investors.
i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
This strikes me as more of a vanity move than a real marketing move.
I paid for my name to be put in the ad. I admit it was purely for personal business reasons. I support and install Firefox all the time for me clients that are constantly bogged down in spyware. Having an NYT ad that will be framed on my wall with my name on it gives this unheard of browser more credibility in the minds of my clients. Gives me some free press as well even if I have to point it out to people.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Welp, googling for them brought me to http://travel.lanfear.com/ rather quickly.
Marc and Samantha Wandschneider, you suburban looking, plain Jane looking couple, prepare for the slashdotting of your life! Muahahahahaha
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
There's a certain irony in checking out the Firefox ad from a CVS...
It's "no one," not "noone." Who the hell is noone anyway?
I paid for my name to be put in the ad. ... Gives me some free press as well even if I have to point it out to people.
:)
Don't you mean, gives you some free press, but all you had to do was pay for it?
Throw away that tired old web browser! With Firefox you get SECURITY, STANDARDS Compliance, all in one easy payment of not $100, not $50, not $25, but, FREE. Yes it's free!
This is my sig.
"Connecting "http://www.goat.cx/..."!!!!!!
Phew....
The new york times is read by CEO's and decision makers around the world... LAN Parties are attended by geeks that can't get laid; hence the models.
Which one is a waste of money again?
A geek's true Christmas wish come true:
First name on the ad!
One thing they should do is to place links on the download page to the most popular/useful extensions. People are going to look for features they are used to in IE that are implented in exts in ff and need to be able to find them easily. The link at the firefox page just links to the mozilla update page. From there you have to click the extensions tab. And then the extensions page (to me) doesn't seem very user friendly.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I've been using Firefox for several months now and I won't go back to IE. In fact, I configured my firewall to block IE's network access.
sorry :(
Why not create a webpage with black and white ads for firefox in various sizes in PDF format. Then start a grassroots campaign where people inclined to donate could use those PDF files to take out small ads in local newspapers across the country. Prices of course vary but small black and white ads can be quite affordable for small newspapers which reach only a few thousand readers. I think such a campaign could dramatically increase exposure. ...just an idea.
Surprised there is no surprise eh?
microsoft is simply doing what they always do. they are waiting, and letting others do the work. it's what they did in the first place with the web browser; they let netscape build the browser that people wanted, then they took the ideas and built their own and shoved it into the face of the masses with the os. same thing they did with their whole f'n os back in the day.
they're doing it again. they won the browser war, now they are backing off and letting the mozilla organization pave the way with new browser features. then in time, they'll take their $ and development team, build all those features into a new IE, and shove it back in people's faces, and *poof* other browsers will go away again.
for christ's sake, people on even this site will still put down mac os x, even tho it's laughable to even compare mac os x to windows anymore.
OOPS! I totally screwed that one up. It should be 1 in
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While you are correct that effective marketing indeed has specific, limited objectives (and measureable results) -- this ad is definitely not one designed to prompt users sick of IE to check out the web site.
I say this without seeing a creative brief for the ad, but it's purpose appears to simply be to announce the 1.0 release of Firefox, which it does well. The ad is nicely done in that respect.
However, if it is intended to prompt users sick of IE to check out the site/new browser, it is poorly executed for a number of reasons not limited to:
To address some of your points:
Version numbers mean little to most people unless your target audience is current users and your purpose is to let them know a new version exists. But even then you need to carefully qualify that it's in fact a new version or they may the message. As someone already mentioned, with potential new users, you run the risk of people thinking 1.0 < 6.0 = less mature = not as good.
"Free" is a huge catch-phrase that gets results. The trick is to pay it off appropriately. In advertising world, we (usually) look forward to when we can legitimately include the word 'free'
Testimonials are only effective depending on the message, medium and target audience and only when used correctly. In this case they are very appropriate, but executionally are lacking.
Like I said though -- to announce Firefox 1.0 the ad is great (and much nicer better than what I feared it would be). And as I said a previous post though, now we need to see followup ads that do meet the objective you outlined.