We turned Duo’s butt into a viral Super Bowl commercial.
Duolingo’s iconic mascot Duo the Owl is famous for his passive-aggressive push notifications and finding ridiculous ways to remind learners to do their language lessons. There’s no place Duo won’t go, including the Super Bowl. To reach people on their mobile devices during this moment, we needed to generate a WTF moment that would get people talking.
To tease out the campaign, Duolingo partnered with influencer plastic surgeon Dr. Miami to give Duo the Owl a “BBL” (Brazilian butt lift). This controversial collab sparked 40M organic views and made Duo top of mind heading into the Super Bowl.
For the Super Bowl, we created a 5-second commercial that featured our green owl mascot farting out its own face with a reminder to “do your Duolingo.” At the same exact time that the commercial aired, we also sent a push notification to millions of learners with the same reminder to do their lessons. This timely push notification marked Duolingo's most reengaged notification ever.
X (aka Twitter) named Duolingo the most liked brand of the Super Bowl and media outlets placed it in the top 3 social moments of the game with 100 million social impressions. Most importantly this all led to a 25% increase in reactivated learners, which shows how a cheeky use of digital platforms can directly impact metrics.
Press: The Wall Street Journal, Adweek, Campaign US
