The original naming of Firefox was, in many respects, a happy accident. Initially, the browser was called Firebird. After a legal challenge forced reworking our selection, the name ‘Firefox’ was suggested by a volunteer contributor in a now-legendary internet chat session. In the years since, the original naming took hold, and in alignment with our open source roots, we sought to enable a community of passionate Firefox users to help us build our brand. This manifesto of brand co-creation has resulted in multiple campaigns that have, at their core, opening up the tools and content typically reserved for contracted agencies to the public.

An IT product like Firefox naturally gets a boost in consumer participation because of the communication channels used to discuss the product live online. The early audience of Firefox advocates used the tools of social media blogs, websites, widgets and banners — to grow awareness for the browser to expanding circles of technology’s early adopters.

What’s relevant for all marketers and brand managers is that in 2008, the expansion of social media and the internet into the lives of non-technical consumers opens gateways for even non-IT products to benefit from the freewheeling discourse, connections and co-creation happening every day on the Net.

Traditional brand building strategies have been disrupted. Industrial era techniques — repetition, saturation and need generation — rely on two aspects of the media landscape that no longer hold sway: concentration of attention; and one-way message push. Pre-internet media relied on scarcity and control over content and channels of communication to aggregate consumer audiences. We were passive recipients of a set of mass market messages. The rise of the internet has introduced choice and nearly unlimited personalisation into the mix of how a consumer chooses to allocate the attention he or she has to give to media. Add contribution of nascent consumer expectations to have an ongoing dialogue with their peers and the world, and what you have is a changed landscape for brands. No longer is it possible, even for a savvy FMCG brand manager like Karan, to expect a big media budget and stellar creative alone to carry the day for a brand extension.

Anirudh’s assertion that “resounding success [is] due to superb technology and concept” is in part correct. Once the product is nailed down, the accelerant to the growth of 21st century IT brands such as Google, Apple and Firefox is the vocal, networked participation of a passionate community that spreads the word to their friends, family and colleagues.

In the act of spreading information about your brand, your community of advocates inevitably adds their own perspectives and individuality to the messages that are shared. The benefit of this act of co-creation is a shared sense of equity in the success of your brand by your community. You, as the brand steward, must, however, overcome the desire to tightly control how your brand is communicated.

Karan’s question — which comes first, product or brand — is answered, resoundingly, by “Product” in my experience. Why this is so for certain in IT, and to an emerging extent in FMCG is that it has never been easier for consumers to cut through your branding and ascertain for themselves the value your product or service — actually — delivers.

Karan is asking the right questions about the Mali line extension. Grafting an unwanted product onto a successful extant brand is a strategy without legs in this era. If there is one thing Karan should take away from the community-powered growth of the Firefox brand, it is this: find an authentic, unmet problem among your potential customers. Solve that problem innovatively, and communicate your solutions in remarkable ways.

Transferring the brand attributes of an established product to a new offering may have worked when consumers didn’t have the knowledge now available via an internet search. In this brave new world brand stewards are charting, the old rules no longer apply. The most successful brands will work in partnership with their consumers to improve, evangelise and grow.

The author is vice president, marketing, Mozilla Corporation, California. He can be contacted at 'pkim  at mozilla  dot com'

(Businessworld Issue 17-23 June 2008)