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As a translator of creator-ese, I admit that the terminology can take a while to grasp. I’ve been in the space for almost a decade, and sometimes I feel like I’m still playing catch-up. For all the rapid evolution that makes things so exciting—and such fun to write about—the same acceleration can make it difficult to know exactly where you stand. Plus it doesn’t help that most of these changes are being fueled by Gen Z, with their skibidi rizz and what have you.
So suffice it to say that I’m not the only one who’s eager to learn another language right now—after all, my newsletter readership is further proof that people are all for acquiring new vocabularies. But nowhere is this trend toward multilingualism more obvious than in the rise of Duolingo.
Once a relatively niche hobby, Duolingo has risen in prominence to become a full-fledged cultural phenomenon. Thanks to a gamified learning model, organic consumer demand for learning new languages, and savvy marketing campaigns surrounding a certain plucky owl (more on that later), the brand has rocketed up CreatorIQ’s charts of leading technology companies.
But what role have creators played in this process? And what can brands learn from Duolingo’s example? ¡Vamos a descubrirlo!
Okay, the multiple languages gimmick might run its course pretty quickly. For me, anyway—but not for Duolingo. Here’s the proof:
After steady gains from 2018 onward (2020 was a great time to be using your phone as a means of reaching the broader world), Duolingo kicked into higher gear in 2022, then accelerated even further in 2023. What’s interesting is that while these results mirror trends for Duolingo’s community size and content volume, the difference in EMV between 2022 and 2023 is far starker than year-to-year shifts in these other categories:
There wasn’t that drastic a difference in Duolingo’s community size in 2022 versus 2023—1.9k versus 2.3k creators.
And it wasn’t just a matter of 2023’s creators generating a lot more content, either. As seen from the above chart, 4.2k versus 4.9k posts isn’t a crazy difference. Especially when you compare it to the EMV results: $12.3M in 2022, then almost doubling to $23.8M in 2023.
What’s more, Duolingo is continuing to rise: from January to September 2024, the brand pulled in $28.7M EMV—already dwarfing its 2023 haul with a full quarter to spare.
So it wasn’t just a matter of bringing a lot more aspiring multilingualists into the fold: it was about finding the right community. Here’s how Duolingo duo-did it:
You’ve heard me say it (or read me write it) many times: yet another brand growing thanks to TikTok, how original. And at first, Duolingo looks no different. But a closer inspection of Duolingo’s January to September 2024 data reveals a platform dynamic that I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen before:
There’s a lot to break down in this chart, but here are the notable elements:
One element that really came through when I looked at creators’ Duolingo content was how adaptable the brand remained to these creators’ interests. It wasn’t a matter of these creators posting content that limited itself to the more rote, academic aspects of learning a new language. Instead, creators took language-learning and ran with it, creating a ton of engaging, personal, and (most importantly) fun content. Where was this in elementary school?
Examples of this dynamic abounded. Sophie Sadler (@dirndl_kitchen on Instagram), a German lifestyle creator living in Kansas City, documented her American husband’s efforts to learn German. Indian YouTube comedy collective Shorts Break shared a humorous promotional skit advertising Duolingo as a source for improving your English. The Estrada Twins, a pair of Latina lifestyle creators popular on TikTok, hyped Hispanic Heritage Month, Pringles, and Duolingo via a video about the proper pronunciation of “jalapeno,” complete with plenty of jalapeno potato chips.
These were just a few instances, but all the elements of a winning creator strategy are there:
But you can’t talk about Duolingo’s mainstream appeal without talking about Duo. Who? (Get it?)
Once an innocuous little mascot, Duo—the cute little green owl that serves as logo, hype man, instructor, and spiritual guru—has emerged as a crossover star, a full-fledged cultural phenomenon. It’s hard to overstate the impact that Duo’s presence had on creator content about Duolingo at large, just as it’s hard to overstate the role that creators played in spreading the gospel of Duo.
Like the more general Duolingo promotion that I mentioned above, Duo succeeds as a character thanks to his (I checked) versatility. There’s simply no sort of content that Duo can’t do:
Okay, so some of the Duo content gets a little dark. But this highlights several reasons why Duolingo’s creator marketing has been so successful: not only does the brand let creators drive the discourse, but even better, Duolingo isn’t afraid to have a personality (and let that personality get weird sometimes). As we’ve seen from Nutter Butter, Wendy’s, and countless other brands, so long as that weirdness isn’t forced, and comes from a place that’s consistent with the brand’s identity, it can be a major factor for setting a brand apart in the eyes of consumers.
While ‘multilingualism’ and ‘vocabulary flashcards’ might not seem like a rich thematic category for creators, Duolingo has beaten the odds. By combining so many universal elements—language, humor, games, and love of cute little mascots—Duolingo has formed a strong coalition of dedicated creators. What’s more, with the brand’s stock on the rise following recent jitters about AI, Duolingo looks set to continue this momentum for a while to come:
Come to think of it, maybe the HBBIP newsletter should get a mascot…
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