Mozilla Firefox currently holds 2.8% to 3.7% of the global web browser market. That’s a significant downturn from when the browser had 32% to 34% during its peak in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

It’s fighting back and has recruited agency, We Believers, to do that. It relies partly on nostalgia – the madness and entertainment of its past creators, triggering a desire to revisit lost fun – and also growing dissatisfaction with algorithms. It is built around the question, What happened to the internet?

Past creators echo the annoyances that many feel. Overly Attached Girlfriend may have wanted to know everything about you, but your browser didn’t need to. Dancing Matt boogied all over the world, without any corporations tracking him or selling his personal data. Annoying Orange is incredibly annoying, but he’s still not as annoying as forced AI features.

“That’s why we’re teaming up with these icons to remind people what our browser offers, and show those who wandered off why now is the time to come back,” Mozilla stated in the campaign blog.

For Mozilla chief marketing officer John Solomon, stated, ““I kept going back to Firefox’s heyday, when the internet was really fun, weird, and interesting. The challenge was: how do you lean on nostalgia and heritage, but not be stuck in the past?”

“We wanted to create an idea that truly belongs to Firefox – a challenger browser that helped shape the internet’s golden years and stayed independent as Big Tech took over. The goal? Remind former users that what they loved about Firefox matters more than ever now,” added Gustavo Lauria, founder and CCO at We Believers.

The hero film was directed by the Sunny Sixteen collective and produced by nobodys. The campaign is backed by Firefox features including built-in privacy protections to help limit tracking and the ability to decide if AI features appear and customise how they behave.