Mozilla goes viral
By Danny Sullivan
Computerworld and others reported this week on Mozilla‘s launch of a viral marketing campaign.
“The campaign is a departure from Mozilla’s usual marketing efforts, which has relied on the Spread Firefox site and the host of fans who drum up support for the browser,” states the article.
Given the geeky nature of many of the key customers of technology companies, the viral marketing strategy is sure to be an increasing trend as emerging, “edgy” companies seek to set themselves apart from the incumbents.
And, let’s face it, it’s good fun too. “Engage your audience, don’t interrupt them,” is the marketing mantra I hear everywhere these days. Hear hear!
When you have two professional marketers in the family, some casual conversations can take a peculiar bent. Such was the case when my wife, a seasoned marketing communications strategist, and I were driving along a city street here in Ottawa a while ago. Up ahead, I spotted a car, with a canine passenger whose head was sticking out the window, as dogs love to do. Being a dog owner myself who often indulged my pooch’s enjoyment of high-speed scent sniffing, I said, “Hey, there’s a dog lover.”
We got a little closer and saw a flag on the car bumper featuring the French tricolour but with a yellow star in the upper left corner. I’m a bit of a flag nut and a Maritime Canadian, so I was easily able to identify it as the flag of the Acadian nation, people of French descent who settled in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick starting in the early 1600s. In 1755, refusing to surrender the neutrality they had been granted in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht that ceded their territory to Britain, more than three-quarters of the Acadians living in Nova Scotia were forcibly expelled from their land and deported, many to Louisiana where they became known as Cajuns, a term that is derived from Acadian. It was arguably an early example of what today is called ethnic cleansing. Still, the Acadian culture persists in many parts of Maritime Canada today.
