Peacock’s Post

Duolingo’s brand, social, marketing and engineering team is amazing at what they do - everytime I don’t go on my Duo app it looks like this. How could I not want to practice Spanish after seeing this sad Duo owl. #duolingo #marketing #duolingoapp #brandstrategy

While many companies are struggling to connect with younger demographics with ever more embarrassing “How do you do, fellow kids?” style advertising some companies are walking the road less traveled. These brands are turning youthful anxiety and cynicism into a bridge instead of a barrier. Duolingo and Devolver Digital, have tapped into the “Capitalism as Existential Horror” experience with a wink and a knowing nod. They know that you know and that knowledge offers no salvation. Their user experience and promotional materials have a touch of the sinister, a touch of the absurd, and even a touch of the hysterical. Devolver Digital have made a subgenre out of “a marketing exec with a gun to their head” style presentations and the April 1st “Duolingo on Ice” video drop pokes pointed fun at brand worship and the inscrutable and threatening nature of corporations.  Both companies do a fantastic job at bringing to the forefront the emotions of being pandered to or deceived that many people feel when confronted with traditional marketing materials. The feeling that Devolver execs are desperate lunatics or that Duo the Owl kind of hates you allows a catharsis and connection. Is that enough in itself? Of course not. Devolver Digital publishes expertly curated games and Duolingo have seamlessly combined a reliable learning platform with gamified progression systems (ask me about my streak), but the off-kilter marketing and meme-worthy humor definitely didn’t hurt their proliferation and sustained success.   Check out Duo on Ice here and appreciate the magic: https://lnkd.in/e69TEtnu #duolingo #devolverdigital #marketinggenius

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, brands are constantly on the lookout for innovative ways to engage with their audience and achieve sustainable growth. For Duolingo, now a leading language learning platform, a bold and unconventional shift in its social media strategy paved the way to remarkable success. As a part of the Terribly Tiny Tales strategy masterclass assignment, I've chosen to take a look into Duolingo's strategy change and study the steps they took to reflect their changed positioning. The details are given in the slides below. 👇 #wtspro #ttt #brandstrategy #duolingo #languageapp #marketing

🔍✨ Swipe to find out 3 reasons why scaling your UGC output is a game-changer in 2024! 📈🚀 #UGCScaling #ContentStrategy #DigitalMarketing 📊🔥

Duolingo just had their best year ever. How did they do it? One word: Experimentation. Don't take it from us, though. Here's a quote taken straight from their shareholder letter last quarter: "We’re on track to have our best year ever in terms of user growth, bookings, revenue, and profitability. As we’ve mentioned in previous shareholder letters, we have achieved this in large part because of our culture of experimentation and A/B testing. Through our experiments, we strive to make incremental progress on user engagement, learning outcomes, and monetization. We are not only innovating with new initiatives, like Math and Music, but we are also continuing to improve existing gamification features like Leaderboards, Achievements, and Friends Quests. We continue to see improvement in our engagement metrics and today, over 70% of DAUs have a streak longer than one week, and nearly 20% have a streak longer than a year!" tl;dr - companies who embrace experimentation grow faster. #growth #experimentation

“You’re scaring me.” This was the beginning of the worst push notification I have ever received. “I’m afraid of people who skip their lessons. Do one now!” Duolingo sent me this notification after skipping lessons for a few days. And it was a huge miss. It's the perfect example of what to avoid as a product team. What they thought it would do: - Trigger a positive emotional response - Remind me to continue my lessons - Incentivize me to take action - Increase retention What it actually did: - It made me much less eager to use the app - It made me feel bad about myself - It was condescending - It felt pressurizing As product people, we have a big responsibility to ensure that the experiences we create benefit our audience and do no harm. Trying to increase retention by making users feel bad about themselves is not the way to go. For a company that is praised for its engagement & retention tactics, this is not a good example to set. What are your thoughts on this? Let me know in the comments. 👇 -- PS: I'm a Duolingo fan. As both a user and a designer, I appreciate the effort and craft that have gone into building Duolingo; and I’ve genuinely gotten a lot of value from using it. But this was a miss, and it’s one of those things that needs to be sorted.

I spoke to ~200 creators. Why? 🤔 Because when I first embarked on the journey of building a marketplace, I heard a lot about the power of building in 'public', and 'for the customer'. It's been a game-changer. After dropping a basic MVP into the hands of 100 creators and gathering their invaluable feedback, we engaged in an immense back-and-forth. The result? A truly usable platform where Creators are not only returning but actively downloading and uploading more content than ever before, and a lot of it for free! And here's the nugget: because of our deep engagement with our customers, we're averaging 15% growth per week... And now they've asked for more features... so we've done just that, you can read all about it here. https://lnkd.in/etwVaQUU

I was invited to speak as part of Maven’s launch of Lightning Lessons—free 30-min deep dives taught by tech’s best operators. I’ll be teaching a session about how Duolingo grew from 3m to 200m users. You’ll learn: 📢 How PR fueled growth internationally 👾 Growth through a/b testing and gamification 😅 How to prioritize growth initiatives Join LIVE on Mon, 5/20! RSVP here (it’s free): https://lnkd.in/e9tMK8Wx What would you like to know about growth? Comment below!

Why does Duolingo look sad?! The new Duolingo icon looks old and sad, but why? This is a strategy used by Duolingo to make users curious, install the application, and see the update that came. This is called the #novelty_effect, which increases engagement. Another effect is that people talk about it on social networks. Duolingo had done this before with similar icons, for example, the icon that was melting. What do you think؟ #Deneb_Games #duolingo

💡 Discover how Duolingo leveraged Adjust to improve retention with the case study below.  #appmarketing #adjustcom