Duo’s first video amassed 800,000 views and 130,000 likes, which was at least triple the views of their previous best-performing video. It wasn’t until Zaria noticed their large owl mascot sitting in a marketing meeting one day that she thought of bringing him into a TikTok video. The activity did ok but it didn’t really take off. The campaign consisted of users sharing unique words within their native languages during entertaining scenarios. Their story began at the beginning of 2021, when Duolingo partnered with a third party agency to work on their #learnonTikTok campaign. Little did the marketing team know at the time that this would be their angle for success with TikTok.

How Duolingo tapped into a new market with TikTokĭuo is well known by the app’s users for harassing and guilt-tripping them with reminders if they start to fall behind on their language learning. It took 18 months and the creative ideas of 23 year old Zaria Parvez, Duolingo's social media coordinator and a 2020 graduate of the School of Journalism and Communications at the University of Oregon, USA.

But what was their secret behind their astronomical success? Gavin Crewe, from Sookio Bootcamp 3.0, explains…įor Duolingo, this achievement didn’t happen overnight. Today, they stand at an incredible 4.7 million followers and over 93 million likes. They have achieved phenomenal TikTok success, gaining more than 3 million TikTok followers in just over a year. Duolingo is the hugely popular language learning app that’s famous for its green feathered mascot Duo, their notoriously passive aggressive owl.

Duolingo the owl