How Firefox reunited the original meme team

Before everything was 'content' and everyone a 'creator', the internet was a place where an enthusiastic webcam dancer, a deep-voiced crooner and an irritating orange could become global celebrities.

For Firefox's Come Back to Firefox, agency We Believers and directing collective Sunny Sixteen, through nobodys, went to extraordinary lengths to reunite these viral veterans and recreate their gloriously amateur beginnings.

From tracking down elusive internet icons to painstakingly rebuilding sets and deliberately making things look, well, a bit rubbish, the production was a far more complicated undertaking than the original videos ever were.

shots speaks to Mozilla's Chief Marketing Officer John Solomon, We Believers' Founder and Chief Creative Officer Gustavo Lauria and Sunny Sixteen about bringing the golden age of memes back to life.

John Solomon, Chief Marketing Officer, Mozilla

You joined Mozilla relatively recently, at a time when the internet is undergoing some pretty significant changes. What attracted you to the company, and what did you see as the biggest challenge in getting people to reconsider Firefox?

One of the reasons I was so excited to take on this role about a year ago was that I was a huge fan of Firefox, but I hadn't used it in years. I was the user this campaign is targeting. Love the brand, love the product, but kind of strayed away from it, not really knowing why.

The biggest challenge is that people know Firefox. They have affection for it. But affection doesn't automatically translate into usage. Most people use whatever browser came with their device, and they rarely think about changing it.

Ultimately, we have to turn all that affection into action. Give people a reason to try Firefox again, and make it easy enough for them to do it.

How do you make people remember the internet they fell in love with, and also look forward to solving the problems and frustrations people face today?

And I think there’s never been a better time to come back to Firefox. Since joining, and I would say over the past 18 months, the team has done a lot to make Firefox better: to make it faster, more compatible and give people more control over their browsing experience, including how AI shows up. It was really important to have those things in place first.

Firefox has a particular place in internet history, especially for those who were online in the mid-2000s. How much did that heritage inform your thinking about the brand, and was there a danger of leaning too heavily on nostalgia?

There's something I heard from another CMO a while back that has stuck with me, especially as we thought about this campaign: “We're not a heritage brand, we're a brand with heritage.” And I think that really applies to Firefox. Our heritage is the internet. We've been around for more than 20 years.

When Firefox launched, it had an edge. It was cool, counterculture and a little punk rock. People actually felt something about their browser. We were an alternative to Big Tech, born from the belief that the internet should be open, interesting and something people actually have a say in. Not many brands can claim that kind of history.

So for us, nostalgia means something more. But the challenge with this campaign was: how do you lean into nostalgia and heritage, without getting stuck in the past? How do you make people remember the internet they fell in love with, and also look forward to solving the problems and frustrations people face today? I think our partners We Believers and nobodys really got it right. The nostalgia gets people in the door. What we're building today is why they should stay.

There's something wonderfully ironic about using people who became famous on the internet before 'content creator' was really a profession. What was it about that particular era, and those particular personalities, that felt relevant to Firefox today?

What I love about this campaign is that these original internet personalities weren't big celebrities. They were regular people making things, having fun, experimenting. And the internet made them famous. It was wonderful. It was weird. It was unpredictable.

None of these people were trying to go viral. Tay was just trying to make music and get his music out. Overly Attached Girlfriend was trying to win tickets to a Justin Bieber concert. They weren't career creators or influencers.

Firefox was part of that 'golden era', too.

So when We Believers brought us the idea, it was one of those rare moments where everyone just knew. Of course! Who better to invite people back than the people who made us fall in love with the internet in the first place?

Being on set with this group was pretty extraordinary. I was instantly transported to a time when ordinary people making things on the internet for fun was a novelty. That's the feeling we wanted to bring back with this campaign.

The campaign makes some fairly pointed observations about the modern internet, particularly around tracking, privacy and unwanted AI. How important was it to make those criticisms entertaining rather than preachy?

I think the internet has gone sideways. Generally, it’s become a messy and frustrating experience. Pop-ups, autofill, intrusive ads disrupting sites you’re trying to look at.

And then I think there are some bigger questions around how much power we've handed over to a handful of Big Tech companies. Increasingly, a few companies are deciding how we experience the internet and, ultimately, our futures.

Who better to invite people back than the people who made us fall in love with the internet in the first place?

When we started thinking about this campaign, what we wanted to accomplish and how we wanted to make people feel, we actually explored a few different creative paths that were a little more doom and gloom. But I don't think people necessarily want that right now. They already get enough of that. Just look at the news on any given day.

So what we landed on was bringing some positivity, tied to our brand. We love the internet, and we celebrate it.

Seeing the response has been incredible. People aren't just watching. They're sharing memories, having conversations and bringing their own stories into it. And that's what made the internet so special in the first place. It wasn't just the platforms or the technology. It was the people and the communities they created.

That's what happens when you build a campaign for the people you're actually trying to reach.

Gustavo Lauria, Founder and Chief Creative Officer, We Believers

What was the original brief from Mozilla, and how did you arrive at the idea of bringing together some of the internet's original viral celebrities?

The brief had a lot of great things to talk about: Firefox’s features, its independence, the fact that it’s backed by a non-profit, doesn’t sell your personal data and gives you a choice about AI. We actually had another campaign basically approved that focused more on those benefits and Firefox as an alternative to Big Tech.

But there was something else in the brief that we felt could lead the whole story: reconnecting with former users. Firefox used to have a much bigger audience, and there was an opportunity to bring those people back. We thought that was a really smart focus. These were people who had already chosen Firefox and loved what it stood for.

I paid for several Cameo videos just to get a response from Apparently Kid. I still have videos of him saying, “Sorry, I can’t make it, dude.”

So the night before we were going to present the revisions to the approved campaign, I was walking my dog and thinking about using these internet legends. Suddenly, it all made sense: who better to invite people back than the people who made them love the internet in the first place?

I sent a voice message to Juan, the group creative director working with me. By morning, he’d replied saying he loved it. I went to the studio, wrote the first script in less than two hours, and shared it with John Solomon, Firefox’s CMO. His reaction was, “This is it!”

It’s my favourite kind of idea: simple enough to explain in a sentence, big enough to go global and something only this brand could do.

When you started considering who to include, how did you go about creating the ultimate internet nostalgia line-up? Were there particular personalities you absolutely had to have, or others who proved impossible to secure?

We started with the names that immediately came to mind, then looked for simple connections between their characters and Firefox’s messages. Matt dances all over the world, so who better to complain about trackers following him everywhere? Overly Attached Girlfriend used to be the creepy one, but now your browser spies on everything you do. And Annoying Orange finally found something more annoying than himself: AI you never asked for.

And some people, like Numa Numa Guy or Bad Luck Brian, just had to be there no matter what.

Finding them was another story. Everyone knows their faces, but many don’t have agents or an obvious way to contact them.

So, for example, I paid for several Cameo videos just to get a response from Apparently Kid. I still have videos of him saying, “Sorry, I can’t make it, dude.”

With another person, our producer sent money on Venmo to get her attention. Nothing. We even opened an OnlyFans account to try to reach her there. Still nothing. So she’s not in the reunion. We really did try everything.

A week before the shoot, we still didn’t have everyone confirmed. But we pulled it off: 12 of the internet’s biggest legends, all together. They had such a good time that Chuck Testa asked me if we could do it every year. After everything it took to find them, that was pretty great to hear.

There's a lovely simplicity to the concept, but also an enormous amount of cultural baggage attached to these people. How did you approach writing new material for characters and personalities whose original appearances were so distinctive and well-loved?

Our generation watched those videos so many times that we remember every detail. The expressions, the clothes, the awkward pauses. Everything.

So we couldn’t suddenly make them sound like advertising spokespeople. The new lines had to feel like something they would actually say, while making a really simple, funny connection to Firefox.

Kelly is a good example. She loves shoes, but this time, those “shoes, shoes, shoes” are ads following her onto every single screen.

Apparently Kid is another favourite. Funny enough, some people think Firefox isn’t around anymore, so having him say, “Apparently, Firefox is still here,” was a great way to acknowledge that and get their attention before showing them why it’s such a great option today.

Getting their voices right was only part of it. Everything had to look right, too. We put a lot of craft into making things look like nobody had put any craft into them. The more authentic every detail felt, the more people would connect with the videos.

The campaign has to accomplish two quite different things: celebrate the internet's past and explain why people should reconsider Firefox today. How difficult was it to strike that balance without the advertising getting in the way of the fun?

Nostalgia was the hook. Bringing back the people who made the internet fun gave us a way to get former Firefox users’ attention. But the goal was to show them why an independent browser that puts people first matters more than ever today.

We put a lot of craft into making things look like nobody had put any craft into them.

The connections had to be simple and funny, because talking about technology can get complicated and boring very quickly. We wanted the message to be part of the joke, so people could enjoy the film and understand what Firefox offers without feeling like we’d stopped the fun for a product presentation.

And it had to be something only Firefox could do. It was part of that internet too, and it stayed independent as Big Tech took over. There’s a reason to celebrate where it came from, and an even stronger reason to consider it now.

Was there a particular moment during development, production or the finished edit when you realised the idea was really working?

I loved the idea from that exact moment when I was walking my dog. From there, it was a matter of making it happen the right way.

But seeing everyone together on set was something else. Chuck Testa asking me if we could do this every year. Overly Attached Girlfriend crying when she saw the recreation of that corner of her old college room. And believe it or not, seeing Numa Numa right there, ready to say his line, and everyone happily dancing together even after the directors said “cut,” was very emotional for me too.

That’s when you realise the reunion means as much to them as it does to the people watching.

Sunny Sixteen, Directing Collective, nobodys

Recreating videos that were originally made with webcams, basic equipment and little or no production expertise seems like a wonderfully contradictory challenge for a professional filmmaking team. How did you approach it, and was there a point where you had to actively resist making things look too good?

Yes! One of the most exciting challenges was fighting our own instincts as filmmakers. In pre-production, the biggest task was to study the original videos since we wanted to fully recreate everything: the locations, the wardrobe, the hair and make-up, the lighting and the camera language. Once on set, we absolutely had to fight some instincts, especially when it came to lighting and camera. 

Since the OG videos were not professionally lit or produced, we had intentionally simple lighting set-ups. This was probably the hardest place to hold back. We found ourselves wanting to shape the light into something more multi-dimensional like we would normally do on set. But, alas, we resisted and we are so glad we did! 

Also, to ensure we were maintaining that visual tone from the early 2000s, we shot a lot of the scenes at f/8 or f/11, whereas normally we have the aperture opened up quite a bit more.

The original videos span quite a few years, with very different visual styles and levels of technical sophistication. How closely did you study the source material, and what were some of the surprisingly difficult details to reproduce?

We studied the source material up, down, left and right. These weren’t reimaginings. These were full-blown recreations, and we took that seriously. The biggest challenge was that many, many years had passed (for some, even decades) and so our talent had inevitably aged. For some, you couldn’t even tell. But for those who were kids in their original memes (like Apparently Kid and Success Kid), they looked drastically different walking onto set. So, big shoutout to our wardrobe and hair and make-up teams who went above and beyond and did everything in their power to make our talent instantly recognisable. Our wardrobe team had to custom-make Apparently Kid’s green and white striped shirt. The original doesn’t exist in adult sizes. Success Kid had his now-long hair carefully pinned back. Many of the men had their beards shaved off and some even got significant haircuts.

These weren’t reimaginings. These were full-blown recreations.

We also have to give a ton of credit to our art department on this one, led by Sophia Martinez. The sets and the props were absolutely on point and are a huge reason these spots hit so hard. For example, Kelly’s purple dinosaur stuffed animal from the Shoes video no longer exists. So the art department sourced fabrics and materials and custom-built a doppelganger. Kelly just about fell over when she saw it. We obsessed over the little things because they add up to that instant feeling of, ‘Oh my God, I remember this.’

How much of the original aesthetic was achieved in-camera, through production design, lighting and equipment choices, and how much was recreated in post-production? Were there any particularly ingenious tricks involved?

It was all in-camera. No post tricks, no VFX and NO AI. The idea was to faithfully recreate each meme’s look exactly and pay homage to the internet legends we also loved. 

That was our whole approach from the first day we started pitching the project.

You're working with people who became famous for performances that were, in many cases, completely spontaneous. What was it like directing them to recreate those moments, sometimes nearly two decades later? Did their familiarity with the material make things easier or more complicated?

Their familiarity with the material definitely made things easier. With each meme, we tried to figure out the spark behind the original and recreate that lightning in a bottle. That’s the magic we were after: funny, awkward, specific and lovable. Everyone has their own timing, and that’s part of why you remember them. Our job was to find it again and give it room.

It was truly fascinating watching everyone get into character so effortlessly. To our surprise, they were so comfortable recreating their memes that we actually had the chance to play with different versions of the same performance and riff a little, which is definitely a treat for a director (and editor)!