Axios’ Eleanor Hawkins in conversation with Duolingo’s Manu Orssaud

Yeah, I mean, the mascot was famous before it was part of our marketing. If you actually use our product, you'll know that we send you a lot of push notifications all the time. And that's because learning a language is actually very hard. So we try to get people hooked on the product by coming back every day in order to be able to learn. And the owl became famous because all those push notifications are sent by the owl, right? That's the idea. And there was a lot of comments online and user generated content about, you know, saying that if you don't do your lesson, the owl is going to come and kidnap your family. So people are creating all this lore and those stories that we decided to elevate in our marketing. And that became our trademark. A lot of the work that you see us doing actually found its inspiration in the stories and the memes that our audience actually talk about, including the green owl. So we have fun. We love that sense of humor. We go into dark places sometimes with this, but you know that's what our audience loves. They love to see a brand being so authentic, having fun, being weird and entertaining. Entertaining is really important.

Yeah, so we have about 17 million followers just on our main US account on TikTok, which is one of the top brands on TikTok by the size of followers. And we didn't get that overnight. When we started with TikTok, the first few content pieces that we produced were exactly what you would expect from a language learning app, right? It was working with influencers to translate some funny words and sentences. And it just didn't drive the virality or the interest at all. And it's only when we started to not try to sell a product but try to have fun, knowing that we had this incredible mascot, and we started to create content that was first entertaining. People absolutely loved that. Suddenly they started to relate to the owl. It felt authentic. It felt like almost this owl was a human being with their love for Dua Lipa and their tantrums. And so it became very entertaining. And when you are in a business like us which is all about retention, having some content like this that you find on your social media on a daily basis is the best reminder because you see the owl and you're like, oh I haven't done my lesson today. So that's how we think about our strategy on TikTok, is really to entertain, build that affinity with our audience through quirky fun content as opposed to selling anything.

So we change our app icon about three or four times a year. And the reason why we do that is because people who haven't been on Duolingo for a while, if they see that the app icon has changed and it's weird, they will click on it and then it will get back into their lesson. So it's a very interesting tactic for resurrecting users. And so we do that about three or four times a year. This time we had the idea of doing a dead face Duo. And so this was a very strong creative inspiration for the team. We then decided, okay, we're going to create this entire story about Duo dying, being killed by a Cybertruck. And we were making up those stories every day. And all of this we were fueled by the creativity and the energy and the response from our community. But this started as only, I think the goal was 30 million views for this campaign, and we ended up with 1.7 billion views for this entire activation. So it was incredible. And it's generally a low lift. It's cost effective.

Yeah, I think we are known for being quite scrappy and authentic in the way we produce content. That's why we move so fast. But more and more what I'm trying to do with the team is just to show the world that we also have breadth when it comes to the type of content we can produce, including the much more polished campaigns like the Squid Game one that we did last year. The Charli XCX was definitely on the other end of the scale. This is very much the team coming up with this creative idea of Charli XCX, the green of Brat. And then she has this song with Troye Sivan which is all about talk to me in Spanish, talk to me in French. So it felt very much like ripe for Duolingo to just get in there. So the team drove a van from Pittsburgh, where we're based, to Detroit, which is the first stop of the tour that Charli XCX did in the US, and then turned up with just a bunch of Duolingo masks, which you can actually buy on our merch store if you're interested. And then they just sat in a crowd and tried to grab attention of Charli XCX when she was singing that perfect song. And she did. And we had a ton of UGC, people taking pictures, videos of the Duolingo in the crowd. And then Charli XCX called us from the stage as well going, 'Hey, Duolingo is here as well.' So this is proper guerrilla marketing. It didn't cost us much. And you get a big shout out from one of the top celebrities at the moment. So yeah, very proud of this work.

Yeah, I think first I would say there's an understanding and a belief by myself and the rest of the senior leadership that in order to build a strong brand, you need a brand that breaks the mold, that is memorable, that brings something quite unique, that is not what every other brand is doing. So we really try to take risks because we want to stand out. That's the first thing and we believe that's the right approach. How we build trust, there's two ways really. One to get to where we are, I was talking about our TikTok content that was not performing initially. It was only when we said okay, we're not going to spend money. We're just going to let a few people in the team just experiment with the channel the way they would actually do it. And there was no cost to this. The risk to the business was very low because if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. We just move on to the next idea. But turns out it actually worked. And it drove a lot of growth for Duolingo. You have to start small and remove the fear of failure because you're not spending much money. And then through that, you iterate your way to find the value. And when you have that value, that actually builds trust. It builds trust for the team to continue to push and experiment more and more, which is what we continue doing. And then we've been humbled a few times. We've crossed the lines, right? So we've been in places where we did some work that was very creative but it didn't resonate very well. And I think it's the same core creative team that sits with me who have been through our ups and downs as a brand. And because they have been doing this, they understand the brand so well and have full trust in their ability, from me to them, to create creative work that is close to the line but not over the line, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it's as you said, it's rare for employer brand to be a function that sits in marketing as opposed to in HR and people. But the reason why we do this is because what you see from us out there is a very quirky brand, a brand that is fun, that is creative. And we want to be able to show a very similar brand from what's actually happening inside. Often you see brands that try to be one thing on one side but actually are very disconnected from how their company culture is internally. And at Duolingo, actually the magic comes from the fact that the brand that you see out there is exactly the same as the people inside. The jokes that you see are the jokes that make us laugh. The passion, the authenticity, the agility, the scrappiness is the way we actually work. And then because we have that as well within marketing, that talent brand, with AI we explained that we didn't use the right word when we made that first announcement, but we clarified this now. And now the role of employer brand is really to show that actually the way we use AI internally at Duolingo is not in replacement of people, but it's more as a way to augment what people do and be able to give them more opportunity for impact through AI. So the role of the talent brand team now will be over the next few weeks and months to demystify that and really show through the lens of our employees how AI is being used internally to make our product better and to make our employees better and give them more ways to deliver impact.

Yeah, I mean eventually I think that's really important for us to continue explaining that AI is an amazing tool that we really believe in and be able to show how it's being used. I think there's a bit of a fear generally in the general population about AI because it's not really well understood how it's being used. But I think us as marketers, and in particular for brands like us that are using AI, being able to educate, explain, and through that remove that fear, I think is really important for us to do that.

Um, I think in terms of fandom, right? The one that comes to mind which was awesome this year is when we tapped into Eurovision as a fandom. It's my fandom. Everyone in the team has got a fandom. My fandom is Eurovision, and the team executed on that. So we had Duo turn up over there, show up in the audience as well, work with some of the acts that were part of Eurovision as well, which was awesome.

For sure. Yes. We always, our goal is always to surprise and be in places that you don't expect us to be. So we're always trying to think what have we done that will get people excited and surprised, where people go like, oh my god, I can't believe Duolingo is there. Charli XCX, Charli XCX house.

Yes, of course. Thank you.