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Comment by rswail | Hacker News Reader

um, did anyone else notice that Mozilla has 100 people in their marketing department?

What do they all do?

No idea about Mozilla but it's a large enough organization and user base that those 100 people could be working on:

- Acquisition: Managing channels like search and social ads to grow the user base, upsell browser usage across devices, etc.

- Branding: Working on display and out of home media that reinforces values like privacy and security with how people think of Mozilla

- Partnerships: Working with other tech companies to co-promote or integrate directly (like Ubuntu, etc.)

- Product: Writing release copy, blogposts, etc for new feature launches, announcements, etc. and ensuring they highlight what users want

- Events: Having a presence at major tech events to showcase new product features, reinforcing the brand, making users happy, etc.

- PR: Working with media companies to share assets, messaging, and updates on releases, announcements, etc. to make sure referral moments (like this very article) are favorable

That's one marketing person per 3 million active users.

How many of those active users can reasonably be claimed to have initiated their relationship with Firefox as consequence of that 100 person marketing team, rather than, say, word of mouth in the tech community?

I don't think I've ever seen an ad for firefox.

There have been a few Firefox commercials on cable television that aired during season 3 of Mr. Robot.

Maybe I'm just out of touch, but what target demo is still watching cable television instead of watching TV shows online? The last time I saw people sitting around a television (with a television station on it), I was visiting a nursing home.

Their target market is internet users who can install a browser. This include markets outside of yourself and nursing homes, and includes the audience of Mr Robot.

They have/had campaigns run on YouTube, you can watch them on their channel.

I'm sure the ads exist. I'm questioning their value. If nobody sees the ads unless they go looking for the ads, then what value are they?

I was also shocked to read they spend between $20-100 million in advertising!

Which that much money, couldn’t they just use the majority of advertisement budget to pay a team of great developers for decades?

They've already been paying a team of great developers for decades.

OK, they could pay some more great developers, but as a developer myself, even I agree that 100% development 0% marketing is not the ideal resource allocation.

Sure, but what's the point, if no one uses your browser? Marketing is a necessary evil.

In this case, with Mozilla Corporation as well as the budget mainly coming from google instead of user donations, you have a point. They have a financial interest in higher user numbers. Your statement is however not universally true. If you have a large enough userbase to finance development, or are an open source project, as a non-profit growth is not something you need to spend money on. That really only matters if you have a profit interest. Differently put, you dont need everyone to use your software, it is enough that its available for people who need it. With more growth you get a litany of new problem with having to do something with the incoming money as a non profit. That often means feature bloat, while, "keep it simple stupid" would have led to a better solution. Not to mention adding features the new userbase requests. In the worst case you end up with a completely different product which for many of the old userbase and volunteers is just as bad as if the project was canceled altogether.

All of this not to mention that, while it makes sense for Firefox, the thought that my donation to develop Firefox ended up in some marketing budget irks me deep down.

Spending Google's money.

Justify some exec's paycheck. "I run a 100-person department!"

How many would you have guessed they were? The number does not stand out for me.

Honestly they can afford a staff with a smaller window of experience. They wouldn’t be able to afford a competent agency of 20 or more people.

Whatever they do it’s not working. FF market share has been going down for years.

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