Crazy Like a Firefox

Via Clickz, an article on the success of Spread Firefox, a community-generated campaign, launched to promote Mozilla’s free, open-source Firefox browser. Author Rebecca Lieb calls the drive, launched only two months ago, one of the watershed campaigns in interactive marketing history.

Spread Firefox has helped generate over a million downloads per day since Firefox went out of beta on Tuesday; registered over 25,000 volunteer marketers; encouraged about 100,000 Web sites to display promotional buttons and banners; generated wall-to-wall coverage in the blogosphere and mainstream media; and raised a quarter of a million dollars for a full-page ad in The New York Times.

Firefox is a great browser, and a superior alternative to IE, but it’s remarkable how quickly the product has exploded. Thanks in large part to Spread Firefox, market share increased 3% in a couple of weeks. This campaign is a great example of successful marketing. Whether uniting around a common enemy (Microsoft), or the thirst for a new and better product, users are successfully spreading Firefox, and their campaign deserves notice.