Yes, Duolingo's Viral TikToks Lead to New Learners
Featuring an interview with Zaria Parvez, Senior Global Social Media Manager at Duolingo.
In 2021, when I first interviewed Zaria Parvez, who is now Senior Global Social Media Manager at Duolingo, people questioned the longevity of the brand’s chaotic strategy.
A little over two years later, people are still writing threads about how impressive their “idolized brand persona” is, giving them awards, and consuming their content (their TikTok currently sits at 215M Likes). Their social strategy even showed up in their Q2 2023 shareholder letter.
You can feel however you want to feel about Duolingo’s social presence, but I don’t think you can argue that it’s not “working”. As Zaria will tell me later on in today’s interview, “We see a direct correlation between when a post on TikTok hits and an increase in new learners who choose ‘TikTok’ in our ‘how did you hear about us’ survey.”
Sometimes I think as marketers we focus too much on how we feel about a social strategy, and not enough on how the audience feels about a social strategy. And Duolingo’s audience loves them. And him. The owl, I mean. So much so that they ask him to marry them. Let’s talk about that.
Today’s interview is with Zaria, who I am excited to get to talk to about Duolingo’s recent campaign where they took Duo the owl to Las Vegas to marry couples. It’s the kind of campaign that brilliantly combines their chaotic sense of humor with a consumer insight. I also talk to Zaria about the comment section being the social brief, how Duo has his own seamstress for custom looks, and what to tell your boss when they say to “be more like Duolingo”.
Rachel Karten: First, can you talk me through how the idea to have Duo marry couples came about?
Zaria Parvez: We’ve seen numerous stories from our community of people who are learning a language for love. Whether it’s to win over in-laws or help their spouse feel connected to their roots, it’s really heartwarming. In fact, just last year, the story of a couple that met ON Duolingo and then got married despite living on different continents went viral and was covered by a lot of news outlets.
In addition to this insight, we get way too many comments on every. single. post. saying “Duolingo marry me?” or “Duo can you marry me and my bf?” so we felt there was a natural social tie-in to the brand insight. Guess we do have a wholesome side too! Which is why we decided to make it feral.
RK: I've written a bit about this concept of comments fueling content. How does the Duolingo community inform the types of campaigns and content the social team makes?
ZP: I am a strong believer that the comment section is your social brief.
As social media managers, we’re often so infatuated with going viral that we forget our audience is literally telling us what they’ll make go viral.
Some of Duolingo’s best social moments were driven by our community: the green chicken meme (that has now become Duolingo canon), the ‘let’s review your mistakes” format, and now Duo marrying couples.
RK: I always love hearing a bit of the nitty gritty details. How did you choose who Duo would be marrying? How big of a team went to Vegas? How do you fly with Duo? How long did it take to make the costume? Give me a little production BTS!
ZP: Oh man, this campaign ended up being far more complex than I’m used to! The creative in me thought we could just put a call out on the internet, show up to Vegas, and marry some people. The logistics would beg to differ:
Our community managers sifted through hundreds of learner couples we were aware of, put up a call on social for more couples, and figured out logistics. We had to pass up on some couples because of visa requirements, long travel times, etc., but we’re so happy with the couples we ended up with for this moment!
We had a team of 6 (!) people in Vegas. I led content creation, while the team brought the creative vision to life through art direction and handling all the details of production. This included organizing the logistics of the day, including last-minute running to Walgreens to get green ring pops (naturally) and navigating moving the Duo suit around Las Vegas!
Duo has a custom seamstress (what a diva!) who made his Elvis costume in 85 hours, and we shipped him to Vegas from NYC. The final wig was 15 pounds and the costume had 200 gems. I had the last-minute creative vision to add chest hair to the Duo suit, so I spent all day on set hot gluing and ruffling up the bird’s hair. The magic is all in the details!
My favorite moment was carrying the Duo suit, through the Bellagio, to film in a hotel room. We all wore “bird watch” sweatshirts and hats, so it was quite ridiculous. We thought we were going to get stopped right at the elevator to our room, but the staff just said “Make sure you don’t block the camera with that suit!” and we were on our merry way.
RK: How did you weave influencers into this content series? What was the goal of working with them?
ZP: The core of our strategy is positioning Duo as a creator himself who engages in all the trends you or I would. To an extent, our entire account is a form of satire poking fun at the creator economy. Because of this, influencers are imperative to our strategy.
Our core principle is we don’t want them to sell anything. No promo codes, no “download Duolingo!” calls to action. We partner with influencers who can embody the spirit of the campaign in a way that excites their fans and ours.
For this campaign, we worked with Aileen and Deven, a couple that the internet has just been waiting to get married. So who better than Duo to marry them? A natural fit. Even though their wedding was staged, it was a great opportunity to build brand love by speaking to their audience in a way that felt natural to them.
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RK: There is always lots of discussion around whether Duolingo being "unhinged" is ultimately a good thing. This series feels like the perfect mix of chaotic but still rooted in customer love and feedback. I know you don't speak too publicly about how strategic your use of "unhinged" is, but I'd be curious to get your take on these debates and why "unhinged" works so well for a brand like Duolingo.
ZP: The best advice I ever received was from our former CMO who is now retired: “you don’t know where the line is unless you cross it”.
We have truly embodied that risk-taking energy at Duolingo. The reason “unhinged” works so well for our brand is because we’ve been incredibly calculated (cue Mastermind by Taylor Swift plz). Our core brand truth is: “language learning is hard so we make it fun”. We do that by being entertaining—through our funny sentences in the app, our widget notifications, and, of course, our social content.
Unhinged works so well for Duo because we’ve consistently followed a strategic path of coupling brand messaging with each “unhinged” moment. Whether that’s in our comment section telling people to do their lessons, or showing up in Vegas to marry people who learned a language for love, or even joking about grilling green chicken—there’s a subtle brand awareness play in each post.
Our ultimate goal is for our viewers to be so entertained that they look up Duolingo and learn more. At the end of the day, if being out of pocket makes education more accessible, why not?
What I would caution for other brands:
Our content team is primarily Gen-Z so they’re living and breathing trending content. This has directly alleviated the risk of being cringe—which has led to multiple viral hits. But…
Our team is given allowance to make mistakes. We’ve had our mishaps, but rather than a blame game, it was a focus on how vs who. We commented on something we shouldn’t have? How are we checking to make sure our team understands the no-no areas? Part of hiring Gen-Z is acknowledging they’re junior talent who are growing and learning and finding ways to provide guardrails that don’t block creativity.
Just because unhinged works for Duolingo, doesn’t mean it works for your audience. Candidly, we’re now trying to figure out how to target “older” learners who don’t really care for unhinged Duo. When you take a risk, you’re going to piss someone off. You just have to make sure it’s not the wrong person or group of people! That’s a business decision your brand team makes.
Social media should be your playground. There is a world where you can gain more users, and get more sales based on just a line of copy. It happened for us with our family plan. Creativity needs encouragement and a mindset to make it happen: whether that’s through adding budget, giving creative freedom, or having trust in your social team. If you’re not willing to invest, you’re already falling behind. It’s far riskier as a brand to not take a risk…because someone else will.
RK: Related, I think a lot of people question if the "unhinged" strategy "works". Last time we spoke, you mentioned you'd be gathering more data around how TikTok influences people to download the app. Is there anything new you can share there?
ZP: When you download Duolingo, there’s a “how did you hear about us” survey where you can select things like “friends/family”, “YouTube”, “radio”, etc. Once our TikTok became more popular, we added it as an option in this survey. Since we’re a public company, I’m technically not allowed to share specific numbers on this.
What I can tell you is that we see a direct correlation between when a post on TikTok hits and an increase in new learners who choose “TikTok” in that survey. And when you can show that ‘unhinged’ content on social media is really driving important business metrics—like new app installs—you’re proving that this strategy works to the higher-ups! (Our social-first marketing approach was even highlighted in an earnings shareholder letter last year.)
RK: I have to ask about the Super Bowl commercial, which I feel ties in nicely with what we've been talking about here. People assumed the Dr. Miami collab was some unhinged, why'd-they-go-there moment but instead it was a strategic tease for the commercial that aired during the Super Bowl! Can you tell me a little about that campaign and the social content that surrounded it?
ZP: We wanted to be a big, talked about brand at the Super Bowl, but only had a 5-second ad slot in 7 regional markets. In order to get social buzz while still appealing to a broad audience, we knew we’d have to do something that would marry our unhinged social approach with our product. We did so many rounds of ideating (there must have been 6 different brainstorms), but we kept converging around our widget that had gotten organic traction in the past and decided the best five second translation of that image would be Duo farting out his own face! Our Design Department developed the spot.
The BBL storyline became an obvious social narrative we could tease out, especially since we’ve been dropping Duo’s dumpy on our socials for so long.
RK: Finally, do you have any advice for social managers whose bosses tell them "let's be more like Duolingo"? I know "being like Duolingo" is more than making a brand mascot and twerking on a table. When you distill it down, what could "being more like Duolingo" mean for another brand?
ZP: Before I advocated for our TikTok, I was still writing “Happy Earth Day!” posts and getting into arguments about why using lower case text on social doesn’t make learners question our ability to teach languages properly. I’ve been there. I don’t believe any of the content we’ve created at Duolingo is revolutionary. What I do believe is revolutionary—that literally all brands can do—is allowing ourselves to break through the idea of what we can or can’t be. Who said language learning can’t be social-first? Why does education have to be in the so-called boring categories?
Being more like Duolingo is understanding that you can’t plan virality, but you can plan mentality. We all have lore around our brands, no matter how small or big or what category we’re in—but we have to be bold enough to lean in.
I did not have explicit approval (or budget) from senior leadership to launch TikTok for Duolingo. I just did it. What I did have was space to test and learn with creative freedom—and that’s what being more like Duolingo is about.
So next time your boss asks you to be like Duolingo, ask them if they’re willing to piss some people off, take some risks, and try something new.
Quick reminder that there are some really great new postings on the Link in Bio Job Board. We’ve got jobs at Made In, Parachute, David Yurman, Rhode, and more.
Alsoooo, if you are a brand looking to hire within social marketing, this job board is for you too! You can post your job listings here.
Okay! See you all next week!
The bird watch tees = 🧑🍳😘.
A question that always comes up in any TikTok meeting with a rep is "how does Duolingo use all the sounds, trends, etc without legal approval?" I would love some commentary on that, as when bosses ask us to be more like Duolingo, we say well, you have to be okay with breaking some legal rules. How does Duolingo get around that, or is it truly just unhinged?