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Speaking Of Growth, With Duolingo’s CMO
00:51:02
Performance marketing can become a crutch for some brands, warns Duolingo CMO Manu Orssaud, especially app-based businesses that are under pressure to show rapid growth. That’s why Duolingo makes organic marketing a top priority.
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- [00:00]
Manu Orsad
Foreign.
- [00:13]
Allison Schiff
Welcome to Ad Exchanger Talks, the podcast devoted to examining the issues and trends in advertising and marketing technology that matter most to you.
- [00:33]
I'm Allison Schiff and you're listening to At Exchanger Talks. Or shall I say vous?
- [00:39]
At Exchanger Talks, I can also say.
- [00:42]
Ata ma azine le Ad Exchanger Talks. Although I studied French in high school and Hebrew in elementary school, high school and college, I'm still far from fluent, which is a little pathetic. Maybe I need Duolingo. Which leads me to my guest this week, Manu Orsad, the CMO of Duolingo, a very popular language app with an equally popular and kind of cuckoo green owl mascot. Duolingo invests a lot of money in brand marketing. Duo the owl has his wings in all sorts of things, but that doesn't mean paid media doesn't also play an important role. We'll talk about the balance between brand and performance, Duolingo's organic marketing strategy, how Duolingo thinks about growth and retention, and od Hamon Dvarim tovim. That means lots of other good stuff. But first, please save the date for CTV Connect, taking place March 12th and 13th in New York City. And hey, don't just save the date, snag yourself a ticket. Ad Exchanger is joining forces again with synopsys, ad monsters and chief marketer to host a cantonous summit on all the key issues and opportunities in Connected TV. Learn more and register@ctvconnect.com hey, Manu, welcome to the podcast.
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Manu Orsad
Thank you, Alison. Very happy to be here.
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Allison Schiff
All right, what is one thing about you that not a lot of other people already know?
- [02:05]
Manu Orsad
First thing I come to mind is I've got this really weird fear of flying still. I'm flying to, from London to New York or Pittsburgh at least once a month, but I still have this irrational fear of flying, which, I don't know, it doesn't get easier the more I fly for some reason, which is really weird. But, you know, still, I'm doing that once a month at least.
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Allison Schiff
What is your tactic for calming yourself in the air?
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Manu Orsad
Oh, good question. I, I, I try to breathe, I try to think about concrete things, you know, my to do list, and try to, to, to ground myself into other thoughts. I think that's the only way, really.
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Allison Schiff
So you mentioned Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, for people who don't know, is where Duolingo has its headquarters. Is that right?
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Manu Orsad
Yeah, that's right. That's where Duolingo was founded. Yeah, In Pittsburgh, over 12 years ago. Now.
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Allison Schiff
Do you eat Duolingo tacos while you're there. Because in doing research for our chat, I found out that you guys operate a taco joint in Pittsburgh called Duos Taqueria. And apparently, I mean, it's a legit, good restaurant that generates like, $700,000 in 2023, which is kind of crazy.
- [03:19]
Manu Orsad
Yeah, that's exactly right. We have a taqueria on site, actually, just outside the office. The office we are leasing in Pittsburgh. It's part of the lease. There was this commercial part of it, which we decided to use as a taqueria, and it's fully branded Duolingo, and that's why it's called Duos, And I'm going there tonight, actually. So it's a great place, you know, where people. Or people in Pittsburgh, both employees, but of course, outside as well. And the tacos are legit. They're really, really good.
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Allison Schiff
Did it start out as a marketing gimmick or something like that? Or did someone just think the Green Owl needs a taqueria?
- [04:04]
Manu Orsad
I think it was. Again, it was a need to make use of that commercial space that we had in the building and do some sort of business there. So the idea of creating a tech area was because of. Obviously, our founder is from Guatemala, and I think the. The food was. Was something that's always been called to. To duolingo as well. So decided to. To turn this into a taqueria. And it's. It's very good. If anyone is in Pittsburgh ever, you should go and check it out. It's a really good brand experience as well, where you see our brand come to life in a very different way.
- [04:42]
Allison Schiff
Well, I do want to spend a lot of time talking about how you guys bring the Duolingo brand to life, and a lot of it has to do with a Green Owl and bringing him to life or it to life or them to life. But to back up, how many languages do you speak?
- [04:59]
Manu Orsad
Yeah, so I'm French originally, so I do speak French. You can probably hear from my Franglish accent. That's my route. But, yeah, so. So French is my native language, and then, of course, English, and then I've been learning Japanese on Duolingo, so getting there, it's a much harder language, for sure to learn with. Not that much reference to Roman languages. Right. Very different Alphabet, different pronunciation. It's a. It's a. It's. It's a really tough language to learn, but I'm enjoying it a lot.
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Allison Schiff
I hate to put you on the spot, but that's not going to stop me. How's it going? And can you share something in Japanese?
- [05:40]
Manu Orsad
Oh my gosh, yeah. I mean it's going, it's going for sure. It's taking me a while, but. Manu des firans. Jean des. Yeah, Very happy to be here.
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Allison Schiff
Ah, nice. Okay.
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Manu Orsad
I was a bit more another type.
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Allison Schiff
Well, how much of a flex is it for Duolingo employees to at least be trying to speak more than one language? I'm assuming everyone has really long streaks also.
- [06:12]
Manu Orsad
Yeah, everyone is really passionate about the product. I think that's really core to Duolingo. We really love the mission and I think we are a very strong product led company. I think we do believe that it starts by having a very strong product. And the best way to build a strong product is to have all of your employees using the product every day and ensuring that they can relate to the experience that the end users are having on a daily basis and report bugs and come up with new ideas and improvements. So it's really, really cool to Duolingo the fact that everyone should be using the products and we've built some mechanics internally as well. We have ways to reward people for using the product as well. So we set up some challenges on a quarterly basis or biannual basis actually, where people are incentivized to use the product and reach a certain level of XPs in order to get some rewards. So there's even a gamification element of using the product within our employee base, which is awesome.
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Allison Schiff
Is Duolingo's employee base like a built in focus group? Do you ever gather feedback and then weave that back into the app or maybe remove a new feature because employees aren't digging it?
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Manu Orsad
Yeah, absolutely. I mean the first port of call is our employees. Actually most of the new features we develop, they go first in a test build that is only for employee usage. And so through that we are able to identify bugs. We are able to see if some features actually are good enough for us to then release them to the wider consumer base. So we spend a lot of time looking at our product from the eyes of our employees that kind of represent the end user and we use that as the first source for feedback and improvements and ideas that we can make. So a lot is internally driven because our first users are our employees. But of course we spend a lot of time as well with end users that are not employees looking through Reddit and very engaged communities of hardcore fans and we, we listen to, to the feedback out there.
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Allison Schiff
What's an example of something that a Hardcore fan on Reddit or a duolingo employee, something they shared that you implemented?
- [08:39]
Manu Orsad
Good question. I mean, a lot of the, the social features that we, we have developed over time. For example, now you can share. Share a streak with a friend as a great way to, you know, continue on your journey for, for learning. So, you know, the streak is a really core element of the Duolingo experience. It allows people to get motivated and come back every day. And I think we, we wanted the app to be a lot more. To feel more social, where you can actually feel that you're on that journey of learning with other people, with your friends, with your family. And so a lot of that feedback and ideas came from actually employees about building friends, streaks and other features that are here to make the app a lot more social.
- [09:25]
Allison Schiff
I will say the only way to get me to do things that I actually want to do that are good for me but that I'm too lazy to do is to make me feel guilty because someone else is doing it and I should be doing it and I'd be ruining their experience. Like, if you make up with a friend that you're going to be in a book club or go running or learn a language together, it's the guilt of letting them down that would motivate me to keep going on.
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Manu Orsad
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, that's the core insight as to why we think, you know, the social layer is, is really important for the engagement that we can drive with the app. And it's always much, much more fun to learn with someone else. Right. It's a, it's. It requires discipline every day to come back and learn. And I think having that sort of friendly tap on your back to tell you, hey, don't let me down on this, and continue on that journey with me, I think it's a great way to motivate people even further.
- [10:17]
Allison Schiff
So the last time you and I spoke, it was the summer of 2023, and we published a Q and A based on our conversation. And I'm kind of proud of the first sentence of my lead. So I hope you'll forgive me if I just read it as a sort of entree to my question. But the first sentence was brand and performance marketers don't always speak the same language, but for language learning app Duolingo, they are compliment.
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Manu Orsad
That's one.
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Allison Schiff
So thank you very much. You don't have to butter me up, but unpack that for me. Like, how do you strike the right balance between brand marketing investments and performance marketing? So that they work in tandem and it's brand and performance rather than brand versus performance, which is how it's often categorized, I think to the detriment of everybody.
- [11:13]
Manu Orsad
No, you're absolutely right. I mean, you know, these are the two sides of, of marketing and I think it's, it's really a short term versus a long term game. I think with brand that there's definitely need to be a lot of, a lot more of a belief of, of what this is, this is doing for your brand over time, for your business over time. I would say performance marketing is more, it's a lot more direct. Right. Direct impact and something you can measure immediately and something that you can actually implement very quickly and put more money into this and suddenly you see higher results. But I think it can also become a trap and I think it's important to really not let ourselves fall into that trap of thinking about performance marketing as the, the one solution and give, give, you know, people the, the space and marketers the space to continue to build a strong brand. Because I think this is the most important part that help to, you know, bring a business. Yeah, to bring longevity to a business and continue, continue growth over time. So the two are very complementary, I would say. But you know, I think obviously the measurement part is one. I think at Duolingo we find a way to understand as well, to understand how brand also can perform as a direct response channel and help to drive direct growth. That's been on the journey that we've been on for the last three years. And that's why we see those two things working very well together because they're able to complement each other. And also there are some similarities in the way at least at Duolingo we are able to.
- [13:01]
Allison Schiff
I do want to talk about measurement a bit more later, but what's another way to avoid falling into that brand versus performance trap? I mean you need to have KPIs that work for you and to actually measure them. But what else can you do to avoid thinking that brand and performance are weirdly two separate things, even though it's all part of the same funnel?
- [13:26]
Manu Orsad
Yeah, it is. Look, I mean, I think the story for us at least at Duolingo is I'm very aligned with our CEO in that the world of app based businesses like ours. I think there is always that trap that many of our competitors and other brands have fallen into which is use performance as a lever to scale very, very quickly before you actually get a very strong product market fit. And you know, you are when you start a business, when you start a product like ours, you probably are under a lot of pressure to grow very, very fast and show that user growth is there in order to secure more investment and to be able to grow your business. And I think the solution usually is that is, you know, invest in performance marketing, drive a strong user base. But then the problem is that you didn't get hooked, right? It's really hard to come off performance marketing once you, once this becomes such a driver of your growth. And based on that, that acknowledgement that, that we have, you know, myself and, and our CEO, we, we basically define some very, very clear guardrails. We have some clear guardrails around how much of our growth we want to be driven by performance marketing, and we really stick to that. So we have a guardrail that is around total budget span on performance marketing channel and as well as what as that. We have a guardrail that is the percentage of users coming from those channels. And we really use that strictly to define clearly how much of an investment we want to make in this type of channels versus versus Brand. But that's, that's really the way we think about it. So there's, there's that part that is very easy to measure, very easy to forecast, which is performance marketing. But we are very, very cautious about ensuring that at the heart the business grows because we have a very, very strong product and we have a very, very strong brand because we believe this is the right way to grow. It's not that we don't care about performance marketing or don't want to invest in performance marketing, but I think there's always that risk that it becomes too much, it becomes too important, and then it's, it's. It's just hard to scale back.
- [15:31]
Allison Schiff
And brand is critical for you guys because you've created almost a culture around your mascot, Duo, the owl, your demented green mascot. And I say that with peace and love because Duo is a. He's a hoot. I'm sorry, forgive me for that. But he's. He's nuts. But he's nuts by design. Like a purposely unhinged tone that you guys bring to your marketing that people really eat up. You have Duo hop on all the TikTok memes. He's been on a fake reality dating show. He chases people around the Duolingo office. He leaves funny comments on random social media accounts. He menaces people on social media when they post about not doing their lessons. There is that Learn Korean or else partnership with Netflix for Squid games too, which is very clever. But what's the marketing rationale for having a totally deranged, in a fun way mascot?
- [16:37]
Manu Orsad
Yeah, I think at the core, I think the best way to explain this is learning a language or learning anything is hard. Right. And requires discipline. It requires people to come back every single day. But I think the unique source of duolingo is that we just made it fun. And the gamification aspect is really what makes this experience really delightful in a product. Right. Where people come back every day to learn and they don't feel this, it doesn't feel like a chore because it is fun. It's something that is engaging, that is a good way to spend their time and be entertained at the same time as they learn. And we realize that this idea of fun is really what we want to expose through our marketing and how we want to build our brand. And so that's really what you see from us when it comes to brand building. We take an approach that is quite fun, authentic, entertaining. Because at the heart, I think we are the only one in that space, in the education space that is really leaning into the fun aspect as a core differentiator. And we want that to shine through our marketing. Because I think people don't want to be sold to, they just want to be entertained by brands more and more and more. I think, you know all those stories about ad ad blindness everywhere and I think that's because people just don't want to see ads anymore. They just want to see brands that are here to make their day better and engage them and make them, make them, make them laugh. And I think that's really what we tried to do with this. And we're very lucky because we have this amazing array of characters, we have this crazy owl. We have a lot of freedom in the way we can bring our creativity to life. And we also have a very strong community that made fun of us before we made fun of ourselves. And I think that's really unique to, for any brands to have, you know, that sort of self deprecating voice about themselves and be able to, to laugh about themselves the way we do. And, and you know, it took us a while to get there. And maybe for the story, you know, what we saw is that when we were sending all those push notifications, at some point there was one which was a little passive aggressive and he said something along the lines of these reminders don't seem to be working anymore, I will stop sending them now. And it wasn't meant to be passive aggressive, but that's the way the community actually interpreted it. And from there, there was this huge snowball effect where people started creating little stories about DODL being dangerous and coming after you if you don't do your lesson and kidnapping your kids and your dogs. And so all of those stories actually that we now joke about and are at the center of a lot of our brand building don't necessarily come from us directly. They come from the community and our users creating those jokes about, about the brand. And we just, just lean into this. And we managed to, through this, find stories that felt authentic, that our community enjoyed because it felt, you know, like we were laughing about ourselves, which was new for a brand. Most brands would have fought this and tried to move away from any negativity around their brand, but we actually lean into this and we made fun out of this. And I think that's quite new and fresh for brands to be able to do that. And that's why it worked for us.
- [20:16]
Allison Schiff
I remember seeing a comment, someone posted something like, I missed one duolingo lesson. And like, you're all over me, like, I'm so sorry. And you guys wrote back, like, what do you want from me? I'm emotionally deranged. I can't help it. And it's a funny interaction. Yeah. And it was just a random account. So it seems like your social media managers are just like on the clock at all times.
- [20:42]
Manu Orsad
That's right. I think community management is a very important aspect of our social media. You know, we get, we get a lot of comments. I mean, we have millions of people following us on, on our social accounts and they love to engage and they love to play in the joke, saying, oh my God, I forgot to do my lesson today. What will happen to me? So it's it. They just give us so much inspiration and reason to comment and, you know, continue to play in that character that we built with the brand. And it's just delightful to, to have such a, such a community that, you know, wants to play on that joke with us and get so much entertainment from, from us replying and, and getting on that story with them.
- [21:21]
Allison Schiff
So I recall one little detail from an interview that you did with Marketing Brew. I think it was early last year and there was this. It was a mention of how you guys even flirted with making an OnlyFans account for Duo, but that was vetoed. So where do you draw the line in between what's going to resonate and be funny and crazy in a good way and what's maybe just going a little too Far.
- [21:48]
Manu Orsad
Yeah, I think we. We trust our instincts first. But when I say this, I think, you know, it took us a while to. To get to where we are now and understand, well, let our instincts tell us what's right and what's wrong. I mean, you know, we. We do believe that the only way to know where the line is is when you cross it. So I think we have had a few incidents over time, right, where we. We felt that, okay, maybe the response from the community was not there. We probably crossed the line a couple of times. And, you know, we. We learned from that. We. We really learned from that. And we. We know now what is fun, what is innovative and weird, but not harmful versus stuff that may be going a little too weird. And so it's just experience, I would say it's just knowing that we want to be a brand that is creative, that is pushing the envelope and, and trying to surprise people. And you can't do that if you're vanilla. Right? People don't care if it's a brand that is doing the same thing every day and try to be safe as much as possible. So we definitely don't want to be that. But it means that we have to take risks, we have to experiment. We have to sometimes be as close as possible to the line. But the only fan account idea was something that we discussed. And then, and then, you know, initially we were thinking, oh, maybe that could be fun. But then we were. That might be going a bit too far. So we didn't actually do it. But, you know, we have those conversations from time to time. I would say probably once a month where there's an idea that pop up and we think maybe, maybe that's a bit too risky.
- [23:31]
Allison Schiff
And before we hit our break, what do you think of the whole brain rot trend? You know, like purposely low quality, catchy, repetitive content on social media. It's like, meant to be viral and appeal to, I think, shorter attention spans. Like the Skibidi toilet stuff, Nutter Butter, they went crazy on TikTok. Like demented music, dancing cookies out of a nightmare on this neon background. There are like cats there for some reason. And I think you guys get put in the brain rot bucket sometimes too. Like, there's that video of duo singing Cotton Eye Joe, but, like in gibberish, like, it's no English on this planet. So what do you think of being in that bucket? And then also, why does this stuff appeal to people as opposed to the more traditional, polished stuff?
- [24:22]
Manu Orsad
Yeah, well, look, I think I will not say anything bad about brand route because it really has served us well. I think we were one of the few brands that truly embraced brandrot and continue to do so. And it's true that it drives virality, drives a lot of engagement from our community, this type of content. So, and, and you know, he does, he does drive growth as well. He has driven growth for the company. And, and, and so we want to continue doing content that is fun, entertaining, that, you know, gives people, you know, three seconds of something weird that is memorable as well, which is ultimately what marketing should try to do. So, you know, I, I think it's, it's good. I think it's, it's, it's, it's aligned with our brand tone. It's trying to be different, it's trying to be surprising. And if the audience enjoys it from us, as we can see, then there's no reason why we would stop doing that. That said, I think our focus right now is to continue on that front, but also diversify towards other type of content that may be a bit more polished or talk a little bit more about the product, the learning content. So I think that's what people can expect from us. A bit more, it's less, maybe continue brand route, but be able to diversify and do more than that.
- [25:31]
Allison Schiff
Well, I have an idea for you which you can feel free to veto. It's not like Duo After Dark or anything, but I kind of have a soft spot for owl mascots because I went to Brandeis near Boston for college and our mascot was Ollie the Owl and he carries a gavel around in honor of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.
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Manu Orsad
Right.
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Allison Schiff
He doesn't really look like an owl so much. He's a strange looking guy. He kind of looks like if an owl was combined with a teddy bear. So, yeah, he's odd looking and he doesn't really have so much of a personality that I. But I don't know, what do you think about going around the country, Duo going on a road trip and finding all the owl mascots and doing like a group photo? If you do that, I want credit.
- [26:20]
Manu Orsad
That's, that's. Well, you know, we need a, we need an alter ego to. Yeah, it sounds like this could be a good candidate. Right. Ours is very, as you know, very unhinged and a bit of a diva. So we need a, we need a friend. That is probably the opposite. That, that sounds like a good idea.
- [26:36]
Allison Schiff
Yeah. Like, Ollie would tell Duo to be quiet, like in the library. I'm studying. Like, that's his vibe.
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Manu Orsad
More like, well, duo will be done to the table.
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Allison Schiff
All right, well, we're going to take a quick break and when we're back, we're going to get into the weeds a bit on how Duolingo uses data to support its marketing strategy, where AI comes into it, a bit about the retention strategy. So stick with us. All right, we're back and let's kick it off with how you guys approach growth marketing. I do want to talk about that a little bit. Duolingo has, you'll correct me if I'm wrong. These are just the latest numbers that I found when I was searching, but it's 37 million daily actives.
- [27:34]
Manu Orsad
Right.
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Allison Schiff
And 113 million users open the app every month.
- [27:39]
Manu Orsad
That's correct. That's the latest figures that we released. Yeah.
- [27:42]
Allison Schiff
And we talked during the first half about not brand versus performance, but brand and performance and avoiding the performance marketing trap. And it's not that you don't spend anything on paid advertising, you're just very judicious about it. I found a really interesting post by Erin Gustafsson. I hope I'm pronouncing her surname correctly. She was a data scientist who used to work for Duolingo and she's with Netflix now. But there's this stat that she cites. This was true as of early 2023, that roughly 80% of your users were acquired organically. So either after following Duolingo on social media or based on the recommendation of a friend. Something like that. So any advice from a growth marketing perspective for brands that don't have a lovably demented green owl to rely on for their organic marketing look, I think.
- [28:43]
Manu Orsad
It goes back to what I was saying at the start. I think what's really unique about Duolingo is that the company started marketing, truly doing marketing, about five years ago. The first, almost 10 years of the company were just about building a very, very strong product market fit. And I think that's where it starts. That's really where people should start, is really thinking about the product and making sure that organic flywheel is there, that the product is as good enough, that it can actually sustain itself, sustain growth itself through recommendations, through word of mouth, and seeing marketing much more as a way to amplify this, as a way to help grow further. But at the core, I think the most important is to have that sort of healthy growth cycle that comes through recommendation and word of mouth, which is what we had at Duolingo at a time when we started really doing marketing. And that's been really the etc. And so that I would say is the number one priority. But the second part, I mean, obviously performance marketing, everyone in the, has similar business model to ours would be thinking about this, which is important of course to get this right and really think about how best to use this for what goal and how to optimize based on the business model. But when it comes to organic growth, since that was your question, you know, from a marketing standpoint for us it's, I mean for any brand, it's really thinking about who they are as a brand and the type of content that the, and the stories that it will tell around their brand that will engage their community. And you know, I'll give you the example for us is when we started doing what I would say, more brand marketing, more traditional, we really approached it with a very traditional model in mind where we would put some TV ads out there and TV ads would say things like, you know, going to France next week, well, learn how to say croissant in perfect French. And those ads were not very memorable. They were really focused on the value of the product itself and not really trying to build an emotional connection with our audience. And it's only when we started to try to stay away from the corporate position of the app and really becoming much more brandful forward and, and using social and creating content that started to resonate that we understood that, you know, this is really where we have an opportunity to, to build, build the right brand. We, you know, I would not say this was, it was not a strategy. We didn't come up with a, with a three year plan. I said, hey, we are going to go all in on social media and the way we're going to do it is, is, is like that. It's, it's really been through this experimentation approach. We just start with something, we see if it sticks. If it does, we double down on it. If it doesn't, we take learning and we move on. And it's the way the company operates as a whole. We call that the green machine. It's really the way, you know, it's how we operate in product, it's how we operate across multiple functions at Duolingo and how we manage to figure out our path with mox. And so we never have very long strategy decks at Duolingo. Definitely no in marketing. And we just pride ourselves in just trying, having a good idea, going from idea to execution as quickly as we can and then making sure that every single project, every single campaign that we run has a very strong retrospective document with Clear, objective learnings that are actionable that we can take and move forward with. It's not something, you know, I would say a secret asset. Right. I mean it sounds pretty basic but I think it's, it's about the discipline to implement this type of ways of operating. I think that's, that's what I would say is the biggest, the biggest opportunity for most brands is to, you know, just try but make sure that whatever you try, you understand the results and you can move on from there.
- [32:58]
Allison Schiff
With clear learnings, yeah, it's a really good call out. You're not going to have a strong brand unless you invest in it, whatever tactics you use. So it's not like suddenly duo ran around like the office dementedly and someone posted a TikTok and you're like, cool. We have a mascot everyone's into and magic. I mean that takes a lot of time to build that.
- [33:25]
Manu Orsad
It takes a lot of time and I think it's important along the way to, to build the rights, the right way of measuring those signals to, to be able to say, hey, we've got something there, we on the right path. There's something that is worth looking into and I think that's, that's really what, what has helped us to figure this out. I think for any marketing trying to crack virality, trying to understand, you know, those channels like social, what kind of value they can bring for their brand or their business is to be able to, to measure this and understand what signals they're looking for.
- [33:57]
Allison Schiff
Well, what specific signals and what specific metrics are you looking at? Word of mouth, for example, is notoriously difficult to measure.
- [34:07]
Manu Orsad
Yeah, I mean for us we have a very simple way and sometimes simple methods are often the best. So we have a large volume of new users coming to download our app on a single day. So because we have a big pool of new users, it's good for us to, we can see signals of what's working in a marketing world very quickly. And what's really been the game changer for us was when you download Duolingo, you go through a registration process. In that registration process, there's a questionnaire where we ask you, hey, how did you hear about Duolingo? And then we give you a few options, TikTok, TV, press, et cetera. So we give you all those options. And what we started to see is that, you know, as I was saying when we were running TV ads that were a bit more, I mean, very safe, we saw that TV was working to some extent, but you know, the results for the investment we're making were honestly a bit not, not great. And then it's when we started to invest a bit more on social media, started to do some, some work on TikTok with the mascot. Then suddenly we started to see that every time we were reaching 2 million, let's say, views on the TikTok, we would see a spike in people saying, I heard about Duolingo from TikTok as, as they were registering for, for. For the app. And so we were starting to see a big correlation between number of views we're getting through social channels and then spikes coming immediately at the same time as this type of content that was doing really well. And so that's why we started to put it to together saying that actually what's really interesting for us as a strategy to build a brand should be based on the effects and impact we're seeing. Should be really to focus on social media and starting to explore more this narrative around the character. Because normally we're seeing very strong community engagement and the content was received very positively. So the qualitative signals were there, but also it was going viral. And we started to see that if we invest our time and our efforts thinking about content first and creating good content, then when the content is good, we start to see virality happening. We start to see impression growth coming for every single post we put out there. And when we see those big impression growth, what we see is that there are spikes coming of new users attributing their registration to that specific content. And so that was really the, the moment where we said, actually we have something unique here for Duolingo that we can do. We have this al. We have this brand. We have a way of creating content that we figured that seems to be working really well, not just for brand building, but also for growth. And so we kind of documented this, we turn this into a toolkit. We now have those mascot suits that you see in our TikTok. We've got about 15 of them all around the world in all of our countries. So we have an entire operation that is dedicated to shipping different mascot suits all around the world for the needs of our campaigns and teams. And so, you know, that's how we figure out our path. And it's because we had that measurement in place and we understood that social was actually an interesting part of the game. And that's what we still look at today. You know, the marketing team is really focused on a few KPIs. One of them is social impressions. And we only Measure organic social impressions that we drive. We don't measure paid media impressions that are here to boost the content because in some ways that's a bit cheating since our core focus is on creating really good content.
- [37:57]
Allison Schiff
Well, I'll do a little plug for you. So to our listeners, if that sounds interesting to you or to someone you know, I saw on LinkedIn that you guys are looking to hire a growth marketing person. There was this job post for VP of growth and Product marketing. So yeah, if you, if you want to try and lead Duolingo's data functions, paid ua, CRM analytics, customer insights, product marketing, I guess they should connect with you on LinkedIn, send in their resume.
- [38:28]
Manu Orsad
That's right, exactly. Thank you for the plug. Yeah, we have a way to help site and apply.
- [38:34]
Allison Schiff
So switching gears a little bit, what about monetizing the app beyond subscriptions like with in app ads? Because I was chatting with someone recently and I'll be honest, they were a little disparaging about the ad experience on Duolingo. Love, they love Duolingo. They're learning a language. But he was saying that he felt like the ads felt like an afterthought, like they weren't so targeted to him. They kind of felt like the ads you see when you're playing a free to play game. And like his theory is that maybe subscriptions are just more important than, than ad revenue for right now. But I'm just curious what you would say to that and if you guys care all that much about ad revenue.
- [39:18]
Manu Orsad
No, of course. I mean I think this is the right insight. You know, for us our focus is on, is on subscription. I think that's, that's the vast majority of our, of our revenue. You know, I think that's, that's where, where we, that's how we generate revenue. But it's also a small portion of our users, I think it's around, around 10% that actually pay for our subscription. The rest is actually monetized through ads. But that doesn't compare in terms of volume of users versus revenue. And that's why we are focusing our efforts and prioritizing reasons, building the right reasons for people to subscribe versus trying to really deliver better ad product for free users. I think that's a question of prioritization for us based on the strategy that we set at Duolingo. And yeah, subscription is really where, where our head is at.
- [40:12]
Allison Schiff
You must have a lot of really interesting insights and data about your users. And they're also all logged in, which is interesting. So I Mean demographics obviously, but their learning process, their usage patterns, I mean what language or languages they're learning, device information, I imagine all sorts of other things. So. Yeah, and what sort of consumer insights do you gather based on how people are using the app and what can you infer and then how does that flow back into your marketing if it does?
- [40:44]
Manu Orsad
Yeah, I mean we, we, we really look at primarily the motivations of our users, why they came to learn on Duolingo and we found that to be the most interesting aspect of the most, the most usable aspect of the user data that we get. So it's probably, you know, knowing that some markets are much more interested on learning for career, for example. Others are much more interested in learning for culture. And you see some very big differences around the world where people that tend to learn English, for example, in markets tend to learn because they have a very concrete, tangible reason which tends to be help me with my, my school homework and progress at school as well as career while in more, you know, English speaking markets as such. So the us, the UK and others, you know, learning a language is more of a way to indulge a, you know, love for a specific culture, let's say. Right. So they, they will learn Japanese, they would learn Spanish and, and so you see those, those differences across, across many markets. And that's always a very good insight for us to think about who the audience is and why they're coming for our product and how we should position our products based on the needs that they have. So we use those signals as a way to think about performance marketing ads, for example.
- [42:13]
Allison Schiff
What about data partnerships with an airline for example, because I know United Airlines, they just launched an ad network last year. I'm sure there are other examples. So I mean they know if someone's flying to wherever, to Italy and you know, if someone's learning Italian. So it seems like there is a lot of. I can't think of a better word. So forgive me, I was going to say synergies. I hate that word so much, but it seems like a no brainer. Is that something you guys are thinking about?
- [42:44]
Manu Orsad
It has come up a few times in conversations, you know, doing, doing more with airlines. I think it's a, it's a good, good use case. I think you're onto something here. It's not something that we've explored fully. I would say we've only had some low touch partnership with some airlines, but it's a great idea.
- [43:03]
Allison Schiff
I want to talk a little bit about retention which we touched on here and there. But you spend a lot of time thinking about getting people to open the app as often as possible, ideally every day. You want them to do their lessons to get momentum so that they want to do it more. Maybe there's a little guilt sprinkled in, but that's all to the good because, you know, you got to keep at it. If you want to learn a language and you prioritize the streak like nobody's business. And the app logo changes to a messed up version of Duo. Right. If you neglect it, and if you're doing a streak with friends and you miss one, you get push notifications to make you feel like you're ruining someone else's streak, which would definitely work on me. But how do you make sure you're encouraging and engaging people with the correct amount of cheeky urgency without maybe going too overboard?
- [43:59]
Manu Orsad
Yeah, I think we have built some machine learning model internally that help us to target users with the right push notifications at the right time. And we have an array of messages that we constantly test at different time to different users and that automatically optimize based on the right frequency as well as the right volume of notification and the right message for different users. So a lot of this has actually been automated over the years to get to where we are now. I would say retention and engagement is what we are obsessed about at the company. You know, we are a retention business. Right. We are an engagement business as well. That's what we. We sell you. We sell you the dream of learning a language. But we ask you to come back every single day. And we know that the only way you're actually going to get to your goal and you will say good things about duolingo is if you are able to feel that you're progressing. And in order to progress, you have to come back every day. That's why, you know, we spend a lot of time across different teams thinking about tactics that we can employ to get users to come back. And when it comes to marketing, actually, you know, I was talking a lot about the TikToks and social media, but it's an amazing engagement tactics because people might be blind to our push notifications, but you know, when they come on TikTok, when they hear the Duolingo ding sound, these are amazing ways to remind people to come back every day to do their lesson. So we really see that not just as a new user acquisition channel, but also as an engagement channel.
- [45:42]
Allison Schiff
A question pops in mind. Because it's January, it's the beginning of the year, people make New Year resolutions, I guess including to learn a language. Are you getting an influx of people signing up at the end of the year and during the beginning of the year and is there some kind of trick and maybe the answer is AI to figure out what the specific behavior is that you need to see or that you have to encourage to hook someone into a streak because. Because we all know that New Year resolutions were made to be broken.
- [46:12]
Manu Orsad
Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. New Year is the most is where we do see a big influx of user. It's a very human mindset. Right. Human thing. New Year, new me. I'm going to finally learn a language. So this materializes in our user base and we see an influx there. We also see a similar pattern after the summer holidays during the back to school season period where we, we also see another spike there of organic intake of users based on that time of year. But, but yeah, you're absolutely right in that, you know, we want to, we want to get people hooked on the streak. I think that's, that's our biggest lever in the products to, to drive long term retention. The streak is, is an amazing, is an amazing thing. So I wouldn't say we do anything different for new users versus others, but those mechanics are. The streak mechanic is really the most powerful one. So our job is to ensure that the push notifications that you receive and all the channels that we have around us to get you back are as effective as they can be in your first few days so that you can build your streak and get hooked on that journey.
- [47:26]
Allison Schiff
So we're nearing the end, but I did want to ask about generative AI and how you guys are using it in your marketing because I know you've done some interesting things that I've read about that your marketing analytics team built its own AI data scraper like you mentioned, to figure out what's trending on social media and what you should maybe be taking advantage of. You've been playing around with ChatGPT to zero in on cultural moments that the brand can tap into. How's that going and what else are you experimenting with? Generative AI wise?
- [48:03]
Manu Orsad
These are still the two main use cases I would say for the marketing team that we continue to use. It's been really helpful to make sense of the data that we have from our community, understand through social channels and social listening what kind of fandoms they're into. And that's been really helpful to understand specific fandoms that over index within our community versus the rest of Social to understand where the opportunity is for Duolingo. So we continue to do this a lot. I would say we are as a company spending a lot around AI, in particular around animation, for example, that you see in the app. And this is really useful because the same type of animation around our character is something that we can then hopefully use eventually in our marketing. So we hopefully will see a lot more synergies between, you know, the. Yeah. Animated content that is in app that we can then use for marketing and our content as well.
- [49:06]
Allison Schiff
Right. Tapping into things like learning high Valerian. Right?
- [49:10]
Manu Orsad
Yep. Learning high Valyrian or Klingon or all of those weird languages that you can learn on Duolingo. Absolutely.
- [49:16]
Allison Schiff
So, last question. Duolingo advertised during the super bowl for the first time last year and it's kind of crazy that that's coming up again next month. So, yeah, I mean, for people who didn't see it in classically hilarious and unhinged form, it was a five second spot featuring duo the owl sort of farting out a mini duo owl out of his butt right alongside a call to action that said do your duolingo. And then it was immediately accompanied by a push notification to, I believe it was 4 million people. Sort of like an homage to all the wacky illustrations that you guys do for your smartphone widget. So, yeah, I mean, anything else, anything else planned? Are you going to do something else this year at the Super Bowl?
- [50:07]
Manu Orsad
The honest, true answer is that we don't know yet. We may be looking into some ideas, but it's not confirmed yet. So I'll let you know closer to the time. Hopefully I'll have an answer for you.
- [50:22]
Allison Schiff
I don't know how you top a farting owl, but that's the problem, right?
- [50:27]
Manu Orsad
That's the problem. That's the odd part. That's why I'm hesitating still to give you a strong answer. But we are, we are looking into some options, but I don't know if we'll, if we'll go ahead. If we feel that we have something as, as strong as that, maybe. But if we don't, we'll, we'll skip. We'll see.
- [50:43]
Allison Schiff
I believe in you, do my best.