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Firefox New York Times Ad Hits the Presses

Posted by michael on from the extra-extra dept.

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."

20 of 721 comments (clear)

  1. Cheers! by orevo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Cheers! by tgd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The question is, whats the penetration of awareness of Firefox already among the particular demographic that actually reads the NY Times outside of the NY area.

      I'd bet a large percentage of people likely to see the ad already are familiar with Firefox, considering how much media attention its gotten in magazines, NPR, etc over the last few months.

      This strikes me as more of a vanity move than a real marketing move. If the intent was to increase browser awareness, the NYT isn't the place to advertise it. People Magazine is, or the Enquirer, or other demographically focused rags like that which target demographics less likely to already be aware of Firefox.

    2. Re:Cheers! by Foogle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know, it's not that wonderfully designed. It looks nice, but in terms of marketing there are some serious problems.

      The word "free" is only mentioned once and in tiny, tiny type. If I were reading the paper, and I didn't immediately avoid this ad in the first place, I would probably never see that reference. And, not knowing what Firefox is, I would assume there was a cost attached.

      The giant "1.0" is worthless. The audience that this ad is targeting can get nothing useful from this information. They may see it and say "Of course it's 1.0; it's 'introducing'". Or they may see it and say "Firefox is out of beta?", but then this is a waste of advertising space for them, because they're already the wrong demographic. At worst they will see it and say "1.0? My browser is already 6.0", which is the opposite effect.

      There's also very little quick information available to differentiate Firefox from the audience's existing browser. There's mention of pop-ups and a lack of crashing, but it's contained in boring testimonials and a tiny little afterthought paragraph that has the smallest text on the page.

    3. Re:Cheers! by clifyt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why is that?

      I know I'm a Mac biggot and one of the excuses for not running Macs in a lot of schools is that its not what is run in businesses. This is also the excuse folks make for buying PCs as opposed to something more userfriendly for their situation -- I can run my business software at home with this so I can work virtual 100 hour a week jobs and get paid for 40 of them.

      When you look at that tact and realize the truth behind it, it only makes sense that you put this ad into a paper that is going to get inside the minds of the PHBs and others that will determine what is run at work. Get a change going on in the workplace, where users see that this is a superior experience, and you will prompts folks to run it at home. Unlike all the rest of their 'work' apps, this one is free and doesn't come with any requirements that the end user needs to think about.

      It then snowballs into everything else. When the parents running this realize they are paying property taxes to go to idiot school administrators (hmmm...I play one of those at times -- unfortunately, the apps I run *REQUIRE* IE because the field I'm in is so specialized we can't run to other platforms when its mandated that if you are an accredited institution, you will use the same tools as others in your field to validate and rank your populations), but the parents will complain that students are looking at porn and otherwise because of popups that aren't filtered at the firewall, and the schools will slowly change where they can.

      And once you get this, it becomes word of mouth everywhere else. Personally, I won't fix my friends PCs any more...when they get bogged down with spyware and otherwise, I send them to browsers like this (my sis could barely use her computer because of all the crap that was hooked into her IE install -- most of which came directly from the cable company that installed her broadband). Since telling her to download this (and several spyware removers -- the IE spyware actually hijacked her where she couldn't even visit specific pages like AdAware's homepage), she's had little to no problems.

      So, get it into the hands of the PHBs who will then make it a requirement that we use this, all the while thinking it was their good luck to see this, and why oh why didn't the geeks in the basement know about this years ago...

  2. What are the chances... by YodaToo · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...we could start a fund raising project to run a full-page ad for Lynx?

    --
    This way to the egress...
  3. I wonder if M$ will reply... by Mondongo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:I wonder if M$ will reply... by generic-man · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In 1995, IBM took out a four-page ad in the New York Times the day Windows 95 came out. It read, to start, "Pay No Attention to the OS Behind the Curtain." In four pages of graphics and text, IBM pointed out how OS/2 was so much better than Windows 95 would ever be.

      Being a big OS/2 advocate at the time (really) I was overjoyed by the ad. Microsoft never formally refuted the ad, and we all know how successful OS/2 would go on to be in the marketplace.

      --
      For more information, click here.
    2. Re:I wonder if M$ will reply... by BorgDrone · · Score: 5, Funny

      No. We'll see IE, the leading web browser in the world with 80+ percent of the market.
      Funny, how that used to be 90+ percent of the market.

      In a few months you'll be repeating the same joke with "70+ percent"

  4. Re:Higher resolution image? by Kreldon · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.mozilla.org/press/nytimes-firefox-final .pdf

  5. Hidden Image or Subliminal Ad? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

  6. All you wanted to know about the ad... by Jonny+Royale · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  7. Re:Not very good by JaffaKREE · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You would prefer "Ten million people from around the world have downloaded the internet to their computer" ?

    That is what I call redundancy !

  8. Re:Not very good by IainMH · · Score: 5, Insightful



    People aren't *complete* idiots. Anyone who doesn't understand 'user' probably doesn't understand any of the concepts involved.

    It's a self-policing system.

  9. Slashdotting an Ad in the NYT... by Reverend528 · · Score: 5, Funny

    This should do wonders for the NYT. I know I'm going to go out and buy a copy.

    --
    Badass Resumes
  10. I disagree.... by dep01 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!"
  11. Re:Higher resolution image? by bunratty · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't mind the extra U. It's there to break up the fight between the I and J.

    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  12. Re:Higher resolution image? by frozenray · · Score: 5, Informative
    Those are "Community Champions", meaning that they got 10 or more other people to donate for the ad.
    Due to the large number of names and the semi-frequent changes and corrections on top of the way the names were sorted (by last name) it was fairly impossible to pull out the Community Champions separately. I decided that it also made more sense for them to be seen as "integrated" within the community, rather than segregated out on their own... AND, in some ways... the underline brings a sort of mysterious attention to them--the kind of special notice that they deserve!
    (from spreadfirefox.com)
    --
    "There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
  13. What's the marketing campaign by Lord+Brandon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  14. Re:A vanity move? Or power to the local guy. by zCyl · · Score: 5, Funny

    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? :)

  15. Much wider exposure by TransmissionX · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.