The winners of the Firefox Flicks contest were announced a few days ago and
I must say that, overall, I’m less than impressed with the quality of the submissions
and not entirely thrilled about the selected winners.
I thought Daredevil was
quite good, but it seems to be missing something. The music was very good
and it was very well filmed, but the girl with very strong american accent may
not have the clearest and easiest voice to understand, particularly for non-native
English speakers.
It was one of the few submissions that didn’t just use scare tactics by focussing
on viruses, spyware and pop-ups, and stayed well clear of the “use Firefox
or your screwed” message that was so abundant among the others; but rather thought
outside the box and focussed on a lifestyle metaphor.
One thing that it is lacking, however, is that it doesn’t create brand recognition
as well as it needs to at this early stage. I feel it needed to say something
at the end to help the user understand the metaphor and relate it, and the brand,
to the web – we don’t want people thinking Firefox is just some kind of surfboard.
Wheee! was, by far, the most popular of the submissions—it’s funny, childish
and creates brand recognition by associating the Firefox logo with something
users are already familiar with: the IE logo, as well as Safari and Netscape.
However, the message that comes across, in not quite so many words, is that
other browsers suck and I generally don’t agree with such marketing
tactics. While that is arguably true of IE—in many respects, it does suck—I
don’t believe that ridiculing your competitors is an honourable marketing strategy
and should not be condoned.
As many people mentioned in the comments, it is catchy and a lot of people
have been talking about it, which is actually one of the major aims of any advertisement.
For this reason, I do feel it deserves an honourable mention, but because of
the other reasons, I don’t believe it deserved second place.
As for Fox Fever, it just screams low
budget crap! I have no idea how this
managed to make the top 3, I didn’t even expect it to receive an honourable
mention. Like so many others, it also suffers by focussing on viruses, spyware
and pop-ups, which I don’t like because it surrounds Firefox with negativity.
When people think of Firefox, they should think about the positive experience,
not the negatives of using an alternative.
It also creates a false sense of security: Firefox is not flawless, it has
its share of security holes and it certainly does not block all pop-ups.
Even with all the preferences I’ve changed to prevent as many pop-ups as
possible, a few still make it through and it’s still quite annoying.
This is Hot is
one that really does deserve an honourable mention, though I really did expect
it to be in the top 3. Overall, this ad was fantastic. The concept, the animation,
the positive message it conveys: just brilliant!
Last, but not least, Give
Me the Soap was cute. Like Daredevil, it too thought
outside the box and came up with a beautiful concept. But the ad itself
is not suitable for Firefox, it really does create the wrong impression about
what Firefox does and I feel this submission would be more suitable for a
program like Ad-aware, Spy-bot or perhaps even some AntiVirus software.
Firefox does not clean your computer like those programs do, but that is
the message conveyed to the viewer by the soap analogy. I feel this one does
deserve its honourable mention and, rightfully so, did not deserve to win.