Take any pop culture moment or internet trend that arose in 2024, from the Super Bowl to the “Brat Summer” phenomenon, and Duolingo’s owl mascot, Duo, is guaranteed to have been involved somehow. Whether it was simply an icon of Duo’s lime-green face next to one of the brand’s comments on a viral video, one of Duolingo’s takes on a TikTok trend racking up millions of views, or even Duo himself (or a flock of his disciples) making an appearance at a buzzy event, Duolingo firmly embedded its mascot in internet culture. 

But Duolingo’s “unhinged” social media strategy and viral marketing stunts aren’t just grabbing the internet’s attention—they’re fueling rapid business growth. In its latest earnings report, released earlier this month, the education platform known for its language learning app reported it now draws in over 37 million users each day, up 54% from the same quarter last year. And 113 million users open the app monthly, up 36%.

“All the stunty, buzzy marketing we talk about—especially the social stuff—has a pretty direct correlation with business growth,” Katherine Chan, Duolingo’s senior director of brand marketing, told Ad Age. “We ask people ‘How’d you hear about us?’ when they sign up as a new user, and, actually, a lot of people say TikTok or YouTube. … We have a playbook where it really starts with social, and we see that when we put dedicated resources into social, it helps grow the app significantly.”

Duolingo’s booming user base is translating into dollars, too. The Pittsburgh-based company raked in $192.6 million in third-quarter revenue, up 40% from a year earlier, driven primarily by a surging number of Duolingo subscribers. The 13-year-old company continues to diversify beyond its core language-learning business. Late last year, it added a music course and an updated math course to its flagship app. In August, it inked a deal with Sony Music allowing it to use songs from Hozier, Meghan Trainor, Whitney Houston and others as part of its music curriculum. It also offers a children’s reading education app called Duolingo ABC.

“It may seem that Duo is everywhere, and that’s intentional,” said Manu Orssaud, Duolingo’s chief marketing officer, at the company’s sixth annual “Duocon” conference in September. 

Shaping culture

Indeed, Duo’s presence was palpable across a slew of key pop culture moments in 2024—even more so than the year prior, when the owl mascot crashed the premiere of the “Barbie” movie and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

In February, Duolingo ran its first-ever Super Bowl spot, a five-second regional ad of Duo farting a second head out of his rear end. The ad, which Orssaud told Ad Age at the time was a nod to online discourse about one of the bizarre illustrations featured on Duolingo’s smartphone widget, was accompanied by a push notification sent to 4 million Duolingo users in the regional markets where the ad aired during the TV spot’s five-second window.

The coordinated push notification also leaned into the slightly menacing online persona Duolingo has developed for its owl mascot, “reinforcing the idea that Duo is always watching,” the brand’s in-house marketing team wrote in a blog post. 

Orssaud viewed bringing Duo into the Super Bowl as an “opportunity to really cement our evolution into a brand that is able to impact culture and be there in those big moments that people care about.” That mission underlaid many of Duolingo’s biggest marketing moments this year, such as a stunt at Charli XCX and Troye Sivan’s Sweat Tour in September, where a group of over 20 Duolingo employees attended the concert while donning Duo masks. 

The flock of Duos caught not only the attention of other concertgoers but Charli XCX herself, who gave the group a mid-performance shoutout (“Duolingo right there, baby!”). That stunt generated more than 20 million impressions and 2,200 online mentions for Duolingo, said Kelsey Dempsey, a social media content creator for the brand. 

Dempsey was one of several new hires to Duolingo’s marketing team in 2024, Chan said, in addition to several new employees brought onto Duolingo’s brand marketing and brand studio teams and a few new growth marketing hires. But Duolingo’s in-house marketing team, which executes the vast majority of the brand’s marketing efforts, remains smaller than 50 people, Chan added.

One of Duolingo’s biggest campaigns this year was its elaborate “Duo on Ice” prank for April Fools’ Day, which involved a comedic trailer for a fake four-hour ice skating show starring Duo and other members of Duolingo’s growing cast of characters, such as moody teenager Lily and Falstaff, a stonefaced brown bear. 

The brand partnered with ticket sales platform SeatGeek to create an actual event page for the phony musical, but clicking the “Find Tickets” button takes users to a pop-up informing them the show was canceled “due to a class action lawsuit and unsavory allegations concerning the behavior of Duo the Owl.”

The “Duo on Ice” campaign garnered roughly 26 million views across Duolingo’s social channels, and “Spanish or Vanish,” a song Duolingo commissioned from The Gregory Brothers (the group behind the viral hit “It’s Corn”), has been streamed over 2.8 million times on Spotify.

Duolingo also made its first foray into experiential marketing this year with its Streak Society pop-up in August. The New York event, which required a 365-day Duolingo streak to enter, drew roughly 6,000 attendees over its three days.

Conquering the world

Duolingo also attributes some of its surging user growth over the past year to its redoubled efforts to expand into new international markets. The brand has honed in on establishing a global network of marketing managers based in several countries it considers “priority markets,” including Japan, France, Germany, Brazil and Korea, Chan said. Duolingo just launched its Korea team a few weeks ago, and is preparing to set up small teams in Italy and Turkey in the coming months.

Each marketing manager is responsible for developing a Duolingo TikTok channel unique to the country they’re based in, Chan said. Duolingo’s German account, for example, has dubbed the brand’s mascot “Rave Duo,” reflecting the popularity of the dance parties in Germany, she said. 

“We try to stick with the formula of Duo as a creator, and then kind of localize the content,” Chan said. “Obviously, we’re not talking about the same trends in Korea as we are in the U.S., but we do try to keep the same slightly irreverent, humorous tone.”

Duolingo also leaned further into its YouTube Shorts channel this year, where the team swaps trend-based videos for scripted content, skits and animated shorts. The brand’s illustrious TikTok strategy, growing presence on YouTube Shorts and expansion into new international markets fueled an 80% increase in its overall social media impressions in 2024, according to Duolingo’s latest shareholder letter. And, going by Duolingo’s growth trajectory over the three years since it launched its viral TikTok channel, the brand’s link to pop culture will likely only become more inextricable in the next 12 months.