The Marketing Strategy Behind the Internet’s Favorite Green Menace

Duolingo’s approach has inspired a host of other unhinged mascots by brands including Jack in the Box, Planters, and Pop-Tarts. So to keep things fresh, the brand has been expanding its own universe.

This has included Living With Lily, a YouTube Shorts series focused on the brand’s other, “emo mascot.” Launched in 2024, the show was the brand’s first attempt at serialized content; it garnered 10.5 million views and brought 100,000 new followers to the brand in its first run.

“We treat our socials like a sitcom. Everything we put out there is new lore. It’s new things that the community can bite into,” Parvez said.

In the face of a looming TikTok ban in the U.S., YouTube Shorts is becoming an increasingly important channel, with viewership growing 430% year-over-year for the brand.

While TikTok is trend- and audio-driven, YouTube is a space to play and learn. Parvez describes it as a platform where people can “escape their own algorithms” and Duolingo can expand into longer-form content (as it did with Duo’s eulogy).

Duolingo’s director of marketing campaigns Michaela Kron-Hags, known internally as the “April Fools queen” for her work on prank campaigns including the Cannes Lions-winning Love Language (a fake reality TV show pitch produced with Peacock), said another big priority for the business in the next few months will be bringing product and marketing closer together.

This will include a promotion around its Lily AI video call feature scheduled for Q2.

“It’s a moment of evolution for us as a brand. We’re in a great spot where we have cracked a lot with the mascot-driven content,” she observed. “But we’re also trying to think about what else we can test and iterate and experiment.”

As for Orssaud, he wants to expand the app’s presence internationally, focusing on markets such as Korea, Brazil, and Mexico.

He also wants to see more Duo in the real world, and fans do too. The brand debuted its first pop-up in New York in August, selling Duo plushies, T-shirts, beanies, and backpacks. Fans gave it a “lot of love,” said the CMO.

Orssaud also sees long-form content as the next frontier, which may seem ironic for a brand so interwoven with TikTok. But fans may like what he has in mind.

“Imagine a Duolingo game show, for example,” he teased.

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Whatever form the idea may take, and wherever it might run, it would surely score the business some points among its already devoted fandom.