This year marks a decade since the launch of Duolingo, now the most popular language app in the world with over 40 million monthly users and more than 38 languages to choose from—the latest addition was Haitian Creole.
Special Report: Hottest Brands
Duolingo's savvy social strategy helped the brand attract a surge of users
Duolingo is one of Ad Age’s 2022 Hottest Brands for building buzz with creative marketing
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Duolingo
Along with Duolingo's three learning platforms, Duolingo, Duolingo ABC, and Duolingo English Test, the company’s expansion to podcasts and live global events, where users can have conversations with other learners and earn points, have led to subscription bookings totaling $225 million last year. Users and non-users alike recognize Duolingo’s mascot, a talking multilingual green owl named Duo, across social channels.
“We create a narrative that develops the personalities of our character and people tend to relate to them and really connect with the characters that way,” said Emmanuel Orssaud, global head of marketing.
Duolingo’s social strategies have helped the brand attract a surge of new users to its services, most notably on TikTok, where #duolingo has accumulated more than 1.2 billion views.
“Duolingo is very much built around experimentation and allowing creative freedom for the teams to be able to experiment and that's why I think we have been so successful on TikTok; we really posted from a very authentic point of view,” said Orssaud.
One notable creative campaign launched amid the season 2 premiere for Netflix's “Emily in Paris" last December offered a free Duolingo Plus subscription—now rebranded to Super Duolingo—to anyone named Emily.
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Duolingo
