Monica Earle, PR Director at Duolingo, breaks down what set Duolingo apart on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. While many brands stick to traditional content, Duolingo leans into entertainment—using their unhinged, persistent owl mascot to push users (comedically) to do their lessons. The key? Don’t sell—just entertain.
These tips are part of "Social Media & Reputation: Finding the Sweet Spot Between Buzz and Brand Integrity."
This session was part of the PRNEWS Pro workshop "Social Media and Influencer Marketing for PR."
Watch the full session at this link.
Full transcript:
Um we were one of the first brands to really put a mascot on TikTok and on Instagram, and the key to unlock there for us what... before 2021 we were doing kind of traditional what would you what you would expect a brand like Duolingo to do on social media, which was like work with multilingual influencers and post about language learning.
The unlock for us was actually to just entertain. Don't worry about selling your product, just be entertaining. Have some tie-back like the idea of our mascot being pushy and annoying and acting unhinged just 'cause he wants you to go do your lesson. So that's always the bit is like he's chasing you to do your lesson. And our creative team has this saying, and this is like they've done a ton of interviews, they can explain this better than I can, but um your next project your next idea is in your comments section. So let your comments section be your marketing brief.
Your audience is probably already asking for certain things...if you're just starting from scratch obviously that doesn't apply, and I would just say try stuff out and test and see what works and iterate, and go from there. Like that test and learn approach has been the the biggest unlock for us, and being comfortable with a little bit of risk, which I know not everybody has that.
Our social team is really good at the community management, so I mean this really before we started doing a lot of kind of video content...the personality came through in our community management and responding to people's comments. And that was kind of one of the first ways that we started to show up in a lot of places. So if you don't have like a huge budget or video team I would go that route That can be a nice way to start to build um your reputation as a brand in certain spaces.