On a Friday morning in mid-October, crowds of individuals—many in elaborate costumes—poured into the Jacob Javits conference middle on Manhattan’s far west aspect. They have been attending day two of New York Comedian Con 2024, seeking to choose up new releases of manga, get their fingers on the most recent Funko collectibles, and perhaps even see a couple of celebrities. It was a star-studded occasion, in any case, with company that included WandaVision’s Elizabeth Olsen, Star Wars’s John Boyega, and Josh Brolin from Dune 2. However there was one other celeb with an extended line of admirers: the Duolingo owl.
Duo, the brilliant inexperienced, lovable-yet-devious mascot of the language studying app Duolingo, attended the occasion, posing for photographs with adoring followers (and infrequently twerking). His look was a part of a promotion for Duolingo’s new collaboration with the favored web-comic platform Webtoon on a five-episode series called Duo Unleashed!, starring Duo and his forged of associates.
Lily, a 28-year-old Comedian Con attendee from San Diego, waited patiently in a half-hour line for her likelihood at a photograph with Duo. “I believe the owl is hilarious. I’m chronically on-line, so I’m consistently seeing him on TikTok, on Instagram, on each platform that I’ve,” she mentioned, including that she couldn’t wait to flaunt the picture to her associates on Instagram. “All of us wish to gown up as him for Halloween, in order that they’re simply gonna die once I present them this,” she mentioned.
Like Lily, most individuals who’ve opened TikTok in the previous couple of years might be accustomed to Duo. His antics on social media have run the gamut from declaring his love for Dua Lipa to confessing to holding the Teletubbies hostage in his basement. Duo’s chaotic TikTok persona blossomed in the course of the pandemic, and he’s since amassed a head-turning 13.3 million followers on the platform. However over the previous few months, Duo has change into extra ubiquitous outdoors of TikTok—a lot in order that he virtually feels unavoidable. He’s been featured in a wacky Tremendous Bowl advert; noticed within the crowd of Charli XCX’s Sweat Tour; and, now, appeared at Comedian Con.
Like Lily, most individuals who’ve opened TikTok in the previous couple of years might be accustomed to Duo. His antics on social media have run the gamut from declaring his love for Dua Lipa to confessing to holding the Teletubbies hostage in his basement. Duo’s chaotic TikTok persona blossomed in the course of the pandemic, and he’s since amassed a head-turning 13.3 million followers on the platform. However over the previous few months, Duo has change into extra ubiquitous outdoors of TikTok—a lot in order that he virtually feels unavoidable. He’s been featured in a wacky Tremendous Bowl advert; noticed within the crowd of Charli XCX’s Sweat Tour; and, now, appeared at Comedian Con.
Since 2023, Duo has been reworking from a normal model mascot to a star in his personal proper together with his personal devoted fanbase. Because the Duolingo app expands its attain, its mascot is turning into increasingly more integral to the model. On a current episode of the Acquired podcast, Duolingo cofounder and CEO Luis von Ahn acknowledged that roughly 15% of the app’s customers on any given day are there due to the owl, which he estimates to be price “tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}” to the corporate.
As we speak, Duo has layers of lore and motivations, which construct him right into a compelling determine on socials, within the app, in model partnerships, and even in the true world. He’s setting a brand new playbook for the fashionable mascot—and dragging language learners together with him.
Behind Duo’s bold plans for world domination
Duo’s transformation in current months is a part of the app’s playbook for exponential progress. The corporate, which was based in 2011, went public in July 2021 with 38 million month-to-month energetic customers and a couple of million paying subscribers. As we speak, it has greater than 113 million month-to-month energetic customers and eight.6 million paying subscribers, and is the world’s most popular education app. For the primary 9 months of 2024, income was up 42% 12 months over 12 months, from $380 million to $538 million. The corporate’s inventory, in the meantime, has surged greater than 40% this 12 months.
Duolingo has been driving this progress with an bold technique. First, the corporate is leaning into generative AI options by a partnership with OpenAI, which has allowed it so as to add an AI-powered subscription tier and create new course content material in much less time. In September, Duolingo launched a video call feature for its highest subscription tier, which permits customers to have interaction an animated chatbot in a “spontaneous, free-flowing dialog” in no matter language they’re studying. The chatbot takes the type of an eye-rolling emo lady named Lily, yet one more character within the Duo universe. (The corporate is so bullish on this characteristic that it allowed Lily to ship the opening remarks in its most up-to-date earnings name.)
@duolingo i’m vengeance I AM THE NIGHT #batman #duolingo #languagelearning ♬ original sound – contact.high
Duolingo can be investing extra in world markets, directing sources towards English learners in nations like China, India, Mexico, and Japan. Lastly, it’s branching out past language studying and making use of its popular streak-based gamification model to different topics, like math and music, which were both launched on the app in November 2023.
As Duolingo expands into new territories and academic classes, it’s leaning on Duo. Within the course of, it’s rewriting the playbook for contemporary mascots.
Step 1: Get bizarre on fundamental
When Duolingo was based, the corporate didn’t have a grandiose grasp plan for its owl mascot. In reality, it was Duolingo’s followers who initially began turning Duo right into a extra fleshed-out character. The app was an early pioneer of gamification methods, utilizing push notifications from the owl to encourage customers to finish their classes. However these notifications typically felt extra like coercion than encouragement, and customers started to see them as a possibility to generate memes about Duo’s passive-aggressive persona.
In 2017, a Tumblr person posted a now much-circulated meme of Duo pointing a gun at a neglectful person, garnering tons of of hundreds of likes. A pair years later, a Duolingo parody account on X posted a sequence of tweets together with, “It’s simple, Spanish or vanish,” and “Beg for your life in Spanish,” which garnered 113,000 and 91,000 likes, respectively. The web started broadly riffing on this pattern, increase an Evil Duo persona who makes use of more and more inventive threats to lure learners again in.
As a substitute of rejecting followers’ interpretation of Duo, the corporate leaned into the web’s darkish humor. Below senior world social media supervisor Zaria Parvez, who joined Duolingo in 2020 and served as the corporate’s first true social media coordinator, Duo started courting a growing fanbase of Gen Z and Gen Alpha users. Kat Chan, Duolingo’s senior director of brand name advertising and marketing, says Parvez “shifted the Overton Window on what ‘quirkiness’ would possibly imply” and made Duo’s humor “extra culturally related.”
In style current TikToks from the model have included an animation of Duo performing the popular “Maps” dance trend (set to a sped-up song by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), getting literally roasted and eaten, and promising that when you “end your streak, I’ll end you” as Zara Larsson’s brilliant pop ballad Symphony blares within the background. Earlier than different manufacturers like Nutter Butter and Pop Tarts began getting bizarre on-line, Duolingo was one of many first firms to play into what Fast Company has termed “DGAF branding,” or the usage of wacky, irreverent humor to construct a web-based persona.
Letting Duo take flight is dangerous, nevertheless it’s confirmed efficient. Over simply the previous 12 months, the model’s TikTok account has grown by 4.8 million followers. Maybe much more notably, on YouTube, the place Duolingo has been investing more energy in short-form content, the model has gained 2.7 million subscribers—reaching about 5 occasions the viewers it had a 12 months in the past. General, Duolingo’s year-over-year social media impressions have risen by 80%.
For a lot of manufacturers, participating in web developments generally is a slippery slope. There have been plenty of think pieces written about how, as quickly as firms attempt to take part on the get together, a meme has nicely and actually died. However Duo has remarkably managed to keep up a spot within the web’s good graces with out being labeled “cringe.” Chan says this boils down to some various factors: sustaining a Gen Z-based workforce that’s “tremendous TikTok native,” rolling out trend-based content material shortly, and giving the social media workforce freedom to pursue their very own concepts with out leaping by too many hoops.
“My philosophy is, let’s take the shortest line from thought to publish,” Chan says. “I believe that most likely has so much to do with [our success]. You may simply inform when inventive has been shuffled by a committee of, like, authorized, and PR, and 10 totally different bosses who don’t even know what the pattern is. I believe folks can sense that.”
@duolingo in my winter arc the place have u been #duolingo #winterarc #gymtok #motivation ♬ original sound – Xuvsp
Duo’s out-there on-line persona has been steadily attracting consideration. However now, Chan says, the model is able to construct him into one thing extra all-encompassing.
“We’ve got a really bold objective of constructing Duo extra well-known than Mickey Mouse,” Chan says. “So as to do this, you actually need to construct emotional depth to the character. I believe, proper now, he’s most likely nonetheless largely regarded as a meme.”
Step 2: Convey that bizarre power to the product
Reworking Duo from a meme to a Mickey Mouse-like character is a tall order. One of many greatest challenges is the gulf between on-line Duo and in-app Duo, which has been widening. Whereas Duo has change into more and more unhinged to attraction to customers on socials, his in-app persona has remained primarily healthful and motivational.
So as to current a extra constant Duo throughout the corporate’s platforms, the workforce needed to discover some type of deeper lore for the character.
“It befuddled us for a minute internally, as a result of we had these two ends of the persona spectrum, and Duo lived on each,” says Ryan Sims, Duolingo’s chief design officer. “We didn’t have an amazing story as to why that was. We knew why he was healthful within the app: He needed you to return again daily and put within the work to resume your streak, even when it was exhausting. We knew this unhinged persona on TikTok was actually resonating with folks. However we couldn’t fairly determine easy methods to join them.”
Then, Sims says, inspiration struck: What if in-app Duo turns into unhinged as a result of he’s so determined so that you can continue to learn that he’ll “do something to get your consideration”?
The concept instantly clicked with the workforce. In early 2023, they started plotting out how Duo’s Jekyll and Hyde personalities would lastly come face-to-face throughout the app. The primary trial run was a downloadable widget for iOS customers, which they launched in November 2023. Every day, the widget, which lives on customers’ homescreens, is on a 12-hour clock, and it cycles by varied pictures and messages from Duo relying on customers’ engagement with the app.
“The widget is mostly a window into how Duo feels about your progress that day—or lack thereof,” Sims says. “He begins the day fairly chill, however the nearer you get to midnight, he simply begins tweaking and shedding his thoughts and getting increasingly more involved.”
In keeping with Chan, who helped promote the widget on socials, the characteristic carried out “very well,” inspiring screenshots from customers and driving progress for the app. Duolingo’s artists have been primarily given free reign to provide you with no matter designs they might think about, a quite laissez-faire technique which produced some eyebrow-raising outcomes. One of many widget pictures, internally generally known as “butt-ception,” featured Duo’s glistening bottom—and in the end served as the idea of Duolingo’s eye-catching five-second Super Bowl spot in February. The advert featured the slogan ‘Do your lesson, no buts” rising from the owl’s, er, cheeks.
“I bear in mind [the artist] confirmed it to us, and we have been like, ‘What in God’s identify even is that this?’ It was tremendous bizarre,” Sims says. “Then we have been identical to, ‘I don’t know, let’s attempt it.’”
That guiding inventive perspective—”That is bizarre, let’s attempt it”—appears to generate a few of Duolingo’s most participating content material. The Tremendous Bowl clip is now one in every of Duolingo’s most-watched YouTube movies, with 5 million views.
Step 3: Set up the mascot’s motive and lore
Duo’s Tremendous Bowl advert concerned the owl actually baring his butt on nationwide tv. Even so, it wasn’t his most controversial transfer this 12 months.
This September, the Duolingo app icon instantly shifted from Duo’s usually chipper cartoon face to a clearly in poor health model of the hen: The haggard Duo was sweating and bleary-eyed, with a juicy booger hanging precariously from his beak. Nearly instantly, users began sounding off on the brand new icon, which appeared mechanically on their screens and remained there for round two weeks. They discovered the brand new look “disgusting,” “gross,” and even off-putting enough to delete the app entirely.
“I can’t defend you on this one Duo,” Instagram person @duosattorney wrote underneath a sick Duo post. “Not humorous Duo,” one other remark with 5,000 likes reads. One Redittor summed it up concisely: “TRAUMATIZING!!”
Duolingo stood its floor in an e mail to Forbes: “Duo is kind of actually sick of reminding everybody to do their classes,” a spokesperson wrote. “However don’t fear. His signs aren’t contagious, so long as learners preserve their streaks going.”
Just like the widget, Sims says the “sick Duo” icon originated from artist experimentation and was geared toward bringing Duolingo’s socials and product extra carefully collectively. Regardless of the naysayers, sick Duo content material on TikTok and Instagram drove 30 million complete impressions. Sims additionally notes that followers appear to have internalized Duo’s mission so completely that many have been involved his illness was associated to their very own neglect of the app—a marker of success within the workforce’s books.
“It labored out very well,” Chan says. “That is the primary time we tried [Duo being sick], and I believe we have been actually proud of the outcomes. We’re undoubtedly making an attempt to convey product and content material nearer collectively total.”
As Duo’s Jekyll and Hyde personalities start to merge on the app, his motivations and backstory have gotten extra outlined, like the concept that he cares a lot about customers’ streaks that he would possibly get bodily in poor health, or, as one YouTube video suggests, burst into tears when a learner returns to the app. These particulars elevate Duo from a two-dimensional image to a type of model celeb—one which followers wish to study extra about.
“I don’t assume you’ll be able to care a couple of character in the event that they don’t have a motive,” says Greg Hartman, Duolingo’s head of artwork. “That’s what you see from plenty of mascots—it’s like a figurehead. Once I consider mascots, I consider faculty soccer, proper? It’s only a illustration of one thing operating throughout the sector to get folks amped. That was the [original plan for Duo]. It was identical to, ‘We’d like a emblem.’ But it surely seems, it’s his motive that folks actually like.”
Step 4: Prioritize in-person experiences and model partnerships
Duolingo’s advertising and marketing workforce is now targeted on increasing Duo past his digital presence—and into markets outdoors of the U.S.
In February, Duo appeared in-person at a lucha libre wrestling match in Mexico for La Botargada del Añoh, an occasion the place model mascots actually struggle for his or her followers’ favor. Final month, he started a rave on a river in Germany. That very same month, followers noticed a crew of individuals in Duo masks within the crowd of Charli XCX and Troye Sivan’s Sweat Tour in Detroit (the aptly brat-green birds even received a shout-out from Charli herself). In keeping with Chan, the Duos within the viewers have been all Duolingo staff.
@aaronjandette #duolingo llegando a #labotargadadelaño @DuolingoEspanol #botarga #humor ♬ The Time Is Now (John Cena) – WWE & John Cena & Tha Trademarc
“We’re a really female-dominated group in advertising and marketing, so everybody’s clearly an enormous Charli fan,” Chan says. “I had needed to do one thing all summer time, and this chance got here up, and we determined to go for it. Oftentimes, guerrilla-style advertising and marketing generally is a lot more practical than going by formal channels, as a result of it simply takes so much longer. For us, pace and cultural relevance are tremendous essential.”
The live performance activation garnered greater than 32 million impressions from owned and user-generated content material. Going ahead, Chan says, reside fan experiences might be “a giant space for the workforce to additional develop.”
Duo can be turning into an more and more integral a part of how the corporate approaches its model partnerships. In keeping with George Audi, Duolingo’s VP of brand name partnerships, Duo’s presence is incessantly “one thing that we negotiate as a part of our partnership agreements.” Now that Duo’s personalities are extra carefully entwined within the app, Audi says that there’s some extra room to play together with his look in partnerships, too.
In a collaboration with Chess.com final November, gamers got the choice of dealing with off in opposition to a Duo chess bot in a digital match. Initially, he was a median participant—but when his opponent used a language-based transfer, like a Spanish opening or Portuguese closing, then he was triggered and have become “unbeatable.”
After which there’s the Webtoon partnership. Within the Duo Unleashed! internet comedian, which dives deeper into the mascot’s backstory, Duo is overwhelmed by his workload of regularly convincing customers to study, and decides he wants an assistant to assist him. Antics involving a cloning machine, tons of of evil Duos, and a PR disaster of epic proportions ensue.
Model partnerships just like the Webtoon sequence give Duolingo the chance to flesh out Duo as a personality and construct the viewers’s connection to the owl. David Lee, head of U.S. Webtoon, says he believes readers are likely to have “an inherent curiosity” in uncovering the secrets and techniques behind recognizable mascots. Even so, the urge for food for Duo was notably sturdy: Duo Unleashed! hit the highest trending spot on the location after its launch and pulled in virtually 5 million weeks in simply over every week.
Step 5: Safe celeb standing
At Duo’s Comedian Con meet-and-greet, tons of of followers of all ages—from mother and father with small children to adults in high-fashion cosplay—waited in a snaking line for the possibility to shake Duo’s wing. Between interacting with Duo daily within the app, watching his content material throughout social media, and seeing him pop up in actual life, he’s change into virtually like an actual good friend to many followers.
“I like the owl as a result of he’s his personal particular person, selling studying,” defined Mitchell, 24, who traveled from New Jersey for the occasion. “I am going on LinkedIn so much, and typically I’ll see him publish there. Folks will typically say, ‘I misplaced my streak.’ And he’ll pop in saying, ‘You higher not do this once more!’”
“I simply love the social media presence that the owl has on TikTok,” mentioned Juliana, a 35-year-old New Yorker. “After watching it on-line and utilizing the app, it’s fairly cool to have the ability to say, ‘Hey, right here’s an image of me with the owl that I see daily.’”
“I can’t wait to take my image with him,” mentioned Kelsey, a 20-year-old from Lengthy Island. “I really feel like I’m assembly a star.”