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- [00:01]
Target Advertiser
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Adam and Eve Spokesperson
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- [02:09]
Jamie Loftus
Call Zone Media welcome back to 16th minute, the podcast where we take a look at the Internet's main characters, see how their moment affected them and what that says about us and the Internet. I'm your host Jamie Loftus and Today, after a saga that took us all the way back to the turn of the 20th century in American marketing and up to literally last week, this is the fourth and final installment in our Sentient Brands that Sometimes Get Too Violent or Horny series. So just to start, if you haven't listened to our first several parts, please go do that. And if you're joining us again, congratulations. You have made it to the Duolingo Piss Owl episode. Hopefully that's thrilling for you. Now, when we left off in our last episode, we spoke with Nathan Allabakh of the Nihilist Stakeham's account and we began to inch ever closer toward the present. But while Nathan still works in marketing, as does Amy Brown of Wendy's Twitter Roastmaster fame, neither are still posting on the accounts that they initially made famous. Today that changes. My interview for the final part of this series is with someone who I've received potentially a weird amount of requests for. Her name is Zaria Parvez, but you probably know her as the duolingo owl on TikTok. It is not Zaria in the owl suit, at least not usually. Usually it's some guy named Mark. I got the exclusive. Keep listening. But before we can explore how Zaria Parvez, a recent college graduate, went from suggesting that the inoffensive green owl, mascot of a free language learning app, become extremely horny and virtually grow the company single handedly, let's return to the two marketing roads diverging in a wood we were talking about in our last episode in yeah, get the music going. Okay, here we are in the wood. We've explored nihilism as a marketing tactic now through Nathan Allabak's time running social media for Stakem, and we discussed his feelings on running the account now all these years later. So today we're taking a turn into what was, until five or so years ago, the final frontier of selling product to a logged in Internet person. Being weirdly horny. I won't explain being horny to you. You know it when you see it when you feel it, you little pervert. But as far as social media marketing goes, being horny as a brand really came alive in the late 2010s and experienced a somewhat unsettling upt early 2000s. And wouldn't you know it, Nathan Olabak carefully tracked and published a short history that marked this turn from anxiety and nihilism in social media advertising being the flavor of the month to the owl that fucks. He published this in Vulture in 2022. It's a piece called When Brands Got Horny and I've linked it in the description. So to give you an idea of what I mean by horny brands, consider where we're coming from here, where Amy Brown at WendysTwitter tapped into a propensity for violence. Nathan and Statham subsequently appealed to anxiety and depression on social media at the time, although because it hasn't come up yet, I will say that no one took advantage of depression more directly than Although I do believe it was taken out of context mid thread than the fake orange juice brand Sunny D in February 2019 saying I can't do this anymore. This still makes me laugh. I'm sorry, but at this point a tweet like this would prompt a reaction from other brands that was well received but kind of expected at this point. Moon Pies replies to Sunny D asking if they're okay. Pop Tart offers Sunny D a hug. You get the idea. Even the official account of Satan Blue Check and everything replied, I feel you.
- [07:40]
Chumba Casino Spokesperson
Sunny D, my friend.
- [07:42]
Jamie Loftus
We have to keep moving. And while there were some horny accounts earlier in the decade, it was mostly because being horny was what actually made sense for that company. Think the Pornhub Twitter account. But in the back half of the 2010s, it seems like the success of the 50 Shades of Grey franchise sort of emboldened some social media managers to get a little kinkier. From the same week that Sunny D threatened suicide, the gigantic multi billion dollar company Verizon tweeted the following Yes, T.
- [08:18]
Chumba Casino Spokesperson
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- [08:24]
Jamie Loftus
Verizon is a terrible company and yet I am laughing at that. Other examples Nathan Allabak uses in his piece are photoshops or quote tweeted replies to horny contents from brands like Jimmy John's and the mixtape dropping grocery store brand itself hamburger helper in 2017. But it's the next year that Nathan identifies that being horny on main and yes, I do feel quite old saying that. But being horny on mean is now culturally acceptable, which means that more brand accounts are willing to do it. And this is a very long way of saying that 2018 was the year that it became popular for brands to participate in no nut November. I quit. I quit my job. Just kidding. Here's a tweet from burger king on November 1, 2018 him it's only a month. Waifu crying emoji and Burger King follows us up with welcome to King Burger where we can do it your way but don't get crazy, okay? This month is so unpleasant. Next, Corn Nuts spells out the word nut in nut emojis. Mr. Peanut's social media says that you can eat him in November because he's technically a legume. You can see how this fanned out. Nutter Butter obviously got in on this. Really? Name a nut based product with a Twitter account and they were engaging with no nut November 2018. But I will say that Corn Nuts did take the cake because they just at one point posted what is the craziest place you've nutted enough? Another successful account posting horny stuff was Netflix in the late 2000 and tens. And keep in mind, this was when Netflix was much better thought of in the public sphere than it is today, and was still sort of considered to be a place to find generally good TV and wasn't yet bleeding subscribers. But what's interesting here is that Netflix social media accounts from multiple countries were posting horny tweets to the point where it's safe to assume that this was a globally mandated media strategy.
- [10:47]
Chumba Casino Spokesperson
We're seeing posts like one time BAE Doona stepped on me and it was awesome.
- [10:53]
Jamie Loftus
What's something you can say during sex, but also when you manage a brand Twitter account? And in most detail to line up with the release of that Zac Efron Ted Bundy movie.
- [11:05]
Chumba Casino Spokesperson
I've seen a lot of talk about Ted Bundy's alleged hotness and would like to gently remind everyone that there are literally thousands of hot men on the service, almost all of whom are not convicted serial murderers.
- [11:18]
Jamie Loftus
You get the idea. By early 2020, Arby's had created their own waifu character, and by the time the pandemic lockdown happened, Nathan Alabac traces accounts like this, moving into a more blue balls horny style of content. So by this logic, we were to believe as social media consumers that the brands were sitting at home along with millions of other people not having sex. By 2021, horny brands have been fully normalized. I'm talking weird posts of Build a Bears in silk robes called Build a Bear after dark. I'm talking KFC's Twitter posting jacked Colonel Sanders fan art without any comment and even Denny's hearkening back to our first episode in this series comes full circle and pulls from the IHOB playbook, briefly rebranding itself as, wait for it, Daddies. And it's here we arrive at the Duolingo owl horny saga that has since evolved into multiple story arcs and most recently a pivot back to violence when the Green Owl Duolingo mascot named Duo was quote unquote hit by a cybertruck and killed. And all of this happened just as I started working on this series in early February, 2025. And yes, because it is 2025, Duolingo immediately had merch to launch their dead mascot with.
- [12:56]
Paige Desorbo
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- [13:06]
Zaria Parvez
Friends with a custom coffin.
- [13:08]
Jamie Loftus
I mean, you gotta hand it to them. Monetizing grief. Who do they think they are? Me and every comedian I've ever met. But none of this would be possible without the Duolingo head of social media, Zaria Parvez, who moved from Portland, Oregon to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania shortly after graduating college to start working at Duolingo and whose energy and enthusiasm and frankly just being a longtime poster, brought the company to new heights and escalated all the way to showing Duo the Owl's little ass cheeks during a Super bowl commercial. And because we did an ethics check in our last episode to see how closely the business practices of DACOM aligned with Nathan's progressive social media campaign, I'm going to take this chance to do a quick look at the product that the unhinged energy of Zarya's interpretation of Duo the Owl. So let's take a look at Duolingo. Honestly, after looking at this for a while, I think Zarya Parvez has it a little bit easier than anyone else I've talked to during this series. Really? Just because she's not hawking processed meat? Instead it's her job to try and engage younger audiences online into learning a second language on their phone. It is a comparatively wholesome mission and the company itself has been mostly without scandal. And I say mostly because like many long time successful apps, there has been an increased reliance on AI from Duolingo that's given them the excuse to lay off much of its workforce. And we can assume using AI has had a tremendously negative impact on the environment. No company without sin. But Duolingo was founded in 2011 by two twenty somethings, as these businesses tend to be founded by a guy named Louis Von Ahn and the bone chillingly named Severin Hacker. Imagine knowing a guy with that name. So while the AI controversy is entirely bullshit, and from what I can tell, the founders have been very evasive about it as far as an app that inevitably collects user data goes, NordVPN recently said that Duolingo is a relatively safe app to use. Sure, they've had data breaches before, but not more than your average app. I actually used Duolingo myself for a while during the summer of 2019 after I saw the movie Midsommar and decided, hey Jamie, what if you learned Swedish so you can Midsommar? I'm not sure what the thinking was there, and it was really vulnerable of me to tell you that, because since the 2020 lockdown, Duolingo membership with both paid and free account options has continued to increase. It's a very successful app, and Zaria Parvez explains in our interview that she chose to go to Duolingo over other marketing jobs because of its mission. She wanted to work for a company whose mission she believed in and a workplace that was likely to be more diverse because being Pakistani American, she very often found herself being the only non white person in the room and hoped that a company with a multicultural mission stood to be a little bit different. So Zarya comes aboard to Duolingo in 2020, a terrible time to be a person, much less a recent college graduate. But as we just revisited, a sort of darkly advantageous time to be a social media marketer. Speaking in the most cynical terms possible, you weren't likely to find a more captive audience than 2020, and learning a language mostly for free seemed to many like a less nihilistic way to spend one's time. But even with that considered, prior to early 2021, Duolingo wasn't really known for its social media presence, even though, as we just talked about, horny brand strategy on social media had already reached its peak at this time, at least over on Twitter. So while Zarya didn't invent this style, she has essentially perfected it because, as any convincing social media marketer does, I've gleaned at this point, she's made her own playbook and posted what she actually thought was funny. Authenticity. It's the thing that all advertisers are going for and so few actually accomplish. Okay, early 2021, Zaria Parvez has yet to take the lead on Duolingo's social media, but has been at the company for about a year at this point. And Duolingo at this time is running a pretty dry social strategy. And for the purposes of this episode, I'm going to focus on TikTok, where they've had the most success at this time. The plan was ostensibly to pay existing TikTok influencers to collaborate with the brand and talk about the languages that they were learning in order to get their fans to sign up for the app. You've seen stuff like this before. It's nothing particularly edgy, but the posts are cute.
- [18:37]
Chumba Casino Spokesperson
Did you know that in Dutch there.
- [18:39]
Paige Desorbo
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- [18:41]
Chumba Casino Spokesperson
De MAU, which means now the monkey comes out the sleeve.
- [18:44]
Paige Desorbo
Neu kommt de apaut amau is used when something is revealed that was previously secret.
- [18:49]
Jamie Loftus
However, the posts were also underperforming and per Zaria in our interview, the company didn't think it was worth the fees of the influencers to continue it, and instead of thinking of a new strategy, Duolingo very nearly deprioritized TikTok marketing entirely. And Zaria, an avid TikTok fan herself, disagreed with this and asked for the chance to just chase a few trends on the app. And almost immediately this approach blew up, in no small part thanks to a mascot suit of Duo the green owl that Zaria found hanging around the office, luring at everybody. The first video that blows up is one of Zaria herself, because in the beginning she appeared in these videos pretty regularly. She's sitting at a desk in the Duolingo offices with the creepy empty owl mascot suit sitting behind her with trending audio playing how am I supposed to Live? Laugh, Love. In these conditions, and in part because of the weirdness of it, and in part because of using that trending audio, this TikTok blows up. And before you know it, Zaria is on a roll. She asks a co worker to jump into the Duo Owl suit. That's Mark, and within a couple of weeks the TikTok account had fully pivoted to using Duo as a sometimes menacing, sometimes vaguely horny tool to remind people on TikTok to do their daily Duolingo or to sign up and start learning a language, if they hadn't already. Now, if you haven't used Duolingo before, this probably sounds weird and circuitous, but if you have, it's no surprise that Zarya's strategy, which was both very intentional and really fun for her to do, worked really well. Because the way that she was anthropomorphizing Duo the Owl was very similar to the way that fans of Duolingo had been making popular memes about that same character for years. The difference was that prior to Zarya taking on this role at the front of social media, the company had never interacted with these very popular memes. So while it might sound out of nowhere that Zarya having a static image of the Duo mascot suit in the office with her eyes, mouth and voice lip syncing to audio like this.
- [21:33]
Jevon
I know it ain't the consequences of my actions, you know it's your boy.
- [21:38]
Jamie Loftus
And I just want to apologize here because I know how painful it is for people to explain TikToks to you. Just ask your most annoying friend. But the comments that Duo or Zarya was replying to here all had to do with Duolingo streaks. Or basically did you use Duolingo today to preserve your however many day long streaks of learning whichever language, it's a big incentive of using the app and always had been. So users had made a ton of memes of the reminder push notifications that Duolingo would often send its users to remind them to do their daily lessons or lose their streak. And these notifications were presented somewhat menacingly by the supposedly friendly Duo the Owl. And this led to the user generated meme Evil Duolingo Owl, a photoshopped version of Duo holding a gun and saying something like the Duolingo Owl when you haven't practiced in two days. It was pretty funny and it became a meme format for other stuff, but this meme became popular among Duolingo users all the way back in 2017. I can confirm this because it definitely existed the summer that I failed to learn how to introduce myself in Swedish, but it took four full years until 2021 for the Duolingo company via Zarya to embrace this ethos as their mascot's actual personality. So again, Zaria is using raw material that was already there where social media managers like Amy Brown or Nathan Auerbach had to create a personality for a legacy company. Zaria Parvez is taking existing memes and using her own creativity to amplify it for a relatively young company, and she gets a lot of support internally to do this. Zaria was in her early twenties when this began and was basically given free reign to turn Duo the Owl into a mascot suited TikTok sitcom Agent of chaos and as she explains in her interview, the account's ever climbing presence seem to boost user retention and daily use on the app itself, particularly among young people. Because keep in mind that in the early 2000 and 20s, the vast majority of TikTok users were still teenagers and people in their early to mid-20s. And so particularly in 2021, to do well on TikTok was to uniquely corner a market of young people. And these young people on TikTok, from what @ least initial conventional studies have reflected, were more willing to interact with a brand account on social media than the millennials and particularly Gen Z Internet users of yore were. And we've traced this throughout this series because even when a brand was attempting to act authentically, even 10 years earlier, you would very frequently see the comments flooded with silence Brand memes But by the time Zarya Parvez is acting as Duo the Owl, if a brand was coming off as authentically online seeming, there were very few calls of this nature. Because Duo was playing knowingly into a then 4 year old originally fan made meme and represented an ostensibly wholesome company, most young users didn't seem to really have a problem with it. And another big difference was that these young users seemed well aware and that the account was being run by one of them, making it easier to play into the fun. Going back to the character of Duo the Owl, when Duo was characterized as violent, it was a brand focused kind of violent. He was willing to kill in order to keep duolingo users streaks going. And so in the early days of the account's virality, the shorthand for this was Spanish or Vanish. And the followers of the Duo account loved this and interacted with it very, very frequently, which only boosted its engagement in the algorithm. When the duolingo account posted a vague threat to keep its members on their streaks, commenters would jokingly beg for their lives. Here are a few examples.
- [26:25]
Chumba Casino Spokesperson
Duo it's the FBI release.
- [26:27]
Jamie Loftus
The families don't feel like it.
- [26:30]
Chumba Casino Spokesperson
Thanks Though Duo watches over my lessons more than the FBI watches over the most wanted criminals.
- [26:38]
Jamie Loftus
Duo it's hard being a single mom who works two jobs.
- [26:42]
Paige Desorbo
I'm a survivor.
- [26:46]
Jamie Loftus
But Zaria also switches things up every so often so that no one approach lasts long enough to burn out fans of the account. And that was hard on an Internet trend cycle that kept moving faster and faster. But I know why you're here. You're here to hear about the horny posts. So for your purposes, two things stand out. Not because Duo the Owl was the first to be a horny anthropomorphized character. Far from it. But Duo certainly went the furthest that a prominent brand had gone to this point. One we'll discuss in more detail in our interview, which was a collaboration between Duolingo and and fellow down for whatever style social media brand Scrub Daddy, which is a sponge company that genders sponges. I have a scrub mommy in my sink right now. No time we talk about it in the interview. But the two social media teams met up and long story short, Duolingo and Scrub Daddy decided to make it seem as if their two mascots had a baby together. I promise this will be the last very scary thing I describe in this episode. So as this music is playing, it's accompanied by a slideshow of pictures of the scrub daddy anthropomorphic sponge character holding Duo the Owl's shoulders as the owl literally gives birth to owl shaped sponges. At what cost? At what cost? And keep in mind, this is fairly recent in social media history. So after the fall of the clickbait marketing zenith, years of Buzzfeed, Mashable, you name it. So if you want to go viral as a brand now, it's up to employees to capture the interests of users directly, not a random underpaid writer beholden to posting 20 clickbait pieces a day. And in order to do that, you need to do more. You can't just be horny, you have to be the horniest brand that's ever existed. The other example in Duolingo's case, which sort of served as a story arc, was Duo the Owl's crush on Dua Lipa. Don't overthink it. The name sounds similar. And because TikTok is run by an opaque, uncannily people pleasing algorithm, a TikTok using trending audio that features the photo of a current celebrity like Dua Lipa was bound to have a good start in the algorithm in terms of gaining some traction. But it wasn't enough, and the Duolingo account escalated most memorably when they posted. Duo photoshopped with Zarya's eyes and mouth on to Duo in a public pool asking ew, who peed in the pool? Cut 2 a photo of Dua Lipa on the red carpet captioned, Sorry, it was me. Cut 2 Duo the owl Photoshopped as a mermaid swimming underwater swimming in hot girl piss. Yay. We did it. You listened to this series for three hours just so you could get to Dua Lipa's piss. You could just watch porn. The wild thing here is that even when the approach seems deeply unhinged on Duolingo's behalf, Zarya is one of the few social media managers that can prove her approach leads to user retention. Data bears this out, but there is also proof from the comments in these same horny posts from Reddit after the Piss TikTok.
- [30:42]
Chumba Casino Spokesperson
Honestly, every time Duo shows up on my Foryou page, I log in to do my owl homework for the day so it seems like they're doing something right. Dua Lipa P jokes be damned.
- [30:52]
Jamie Loftus
The Duolingo TikTok account hits a million followers in late 2021 and now boasts nearly 17 million followers. And none of this would have happened with the old vagaries of the influencer overlap attempt that existed when Zarya began working there. Not only did other young tiktokers love the way that Duo interacted with trends, but they also clearly understood that behind this account was a social media manager, working hard and hopefully having fun. A comment from 2022 bears this out.
- [31:31]
Chumba Casino Spokesperson
If they fire you, I will never Duo another lingo and I literally have a 159 day streak because of this account.
- [31:40]
Jamie Loftus
And this also indicates a pretty significant generational shift from the time that we began covering this series. Our first interview was with Serenity Disco, who, when acting as Denny's on Twitter and Tumblr, had some Internet users recognize that they were a middle class person operating the account, but it wasn't assumed that they were the way it is now. Where Zarya was and is catering to multiple generations of online users and what seems indisputable based on available research is that Millennials were more willing to engage with targeted ads than Gen X. Gen Z was more willing to engage with targeted ads than Millennials, and now Gen Alpha is more more willing to engage with targeted ads than Gen Z. Terrifying. Yeah. I'm still constantly parsing out how young people are both uniquely attuned to the ways in which capitalism is dismantling their lives and are willing to engage with it when it's fun. But I'm no better. Gen X is the same. Gen Alpha is the same. And while I do believe that the children are our future, blah blah blah, the children are being raised by algorithms our generation made and we don't know what we're doing. So it's a cycle that is bound to continue repeating.
- [33:06]
Paige Desorbo
Ugh.
- [33:07]
Jamie Loftus
I digress. Okay, we're talking about the horny owl. By 2024, Duolingo was horny posting during super bowl ads, playing the following commercial and just try to guess what's happening based on the sound. Okay, you win $100 if you knew that was Duo the owl's butt inflating until it popped into a second Duo the owl and then just the words do your Duolingo. While Zarya did not conceive this commercial directly, she made this possible. And as time passed, Zarya was given the funding to build out her own team and work with other ad agencies to build her vision for Duo Duo to factor directly into the app itself. More recently, when a social media campaign with Duo is rolled out it's reflected in the logo of the app. So if Duo is sick on TikTok, Duo is sick on the Duolingo app. And you can't really lose if you're the company here, because even if a user does not engage with the brand online, seeing an icon that's normally a smiling owl suddenly being a vomiting owl might make you stop in your tracks and remember to practice Spanish again. Most recently, as I mentioned earlier, this resulted in a stunt that had Duo the Owl and all the other Expanded Universe Duolingo characters murdered by a cybertruck, which got mainstream attention. That's genuinely hard to pull off these days when so many clickbait aggregators have fallen or pivoted to Nazism. I mean, Dua Lipa herself mourned Duo the Owl just a couple weeks ago.
- [35:04]
Zaria Parvez
Duo the Owl is dead and pop star Dua Lipa is responding. On February 11, the Language Learning app Duolingo announced their mascot, Duo the Owl was fatally hit by a Tesla cybertruck. In a statement, the app wrote, tbh, he probably died waiting for you to do your lesson. But what do we know? Duolingo also encouraged users to share their credit card numbers in the comments, adding at the end, we appreciate you respecting Dua Lipa's privacy at this time. And now Dua Lipa is responding on X with her own words of mourning, writing till death Duo part adding a broken heart emoji.
- [35:40]
Jamie Loftus
And if killing the mascot sounds familiar, it's because this kind of mirrors the Nut Alert Mr. Peanut death stunt of 2020. There was also a Super bowl commercial for this, complete with the Kool Aid man's tears fertilizing the ground and growing a baby. Mr. Peanut.
- [35:59]
Paige Desorbo
Mr. Peanut.
- [36:00]
Jamie Loftus
He spent his life bringing people together.
- [36:03]
Paige Desorbo
I know he'd be happy that we.
- [36:05]
Jamie Loftus
Are all together now. Yeah. Thankfully, Duolingo changes course quickly after killing off Duo the Owl. And instead of doing a weird commercial, instead cross promoted between marketing and the Duolingo app itself. To quote bring Duo back to life, this meant having users engage with the app in order to do so. And two weeks and a shitload of press later, Duo the Owl was back to normal. And that amount of cooperation across departments in a company is pretty unique by today's standards. So enough horny setup. Change your underwear. Let's hear it from the Green Owl's proxy herself. Up next, my conversation with Zaria Parvez.
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- [38:10]
Jevon
Hi, this is Jevon, your Blinds.com design consultant.
- [38:13]
Zaria Parvez
Oh, wow, A real person.
- [38:15]
Jamie Loftus
Yep.
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Jevon
I'm here to help with everything from selecting the perfect window treatments to.
- [38:19]
Jamie Loftus
Wow.
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Paige Desorbo
Mm.
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Jamie Loftus
I've got a complicated project.
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Jevon
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Jamie Loftus
I didn't realize you did that.
- [38:29]
Jevon
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Jamie Loftus
Wow. I mean, I always thought I needed a designer to come to my home, but scheduling's always a Nightmare.
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Jevon
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- [38:43]
Paige Desorbo
Hmm.
- [38:44]
Zaria Parvez
I just might have to do more.
- [38:46]
Jevon
Whatever you need. How about you tell me what you had in mind?
- [38:49]
Jamie Loftus
Okay, then. So the first we're looking at is for guests coming over, and I'm thinking of something.
- [38:55]
Paige Desorbo
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- [39:09]
Zaria Parvez
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- [40:19]
Jamie Loftus
Welcome back to 16th minute. I just wanted to take a moment to say I really appreciated the thread on the 16th minute Reddit board from last week, asking politely if I farted during the interview last week. And sorry to disappoint, but I am pretty sure that was a glitch on Apple podcasts. A likely story, I know. Anyways, here's my interview with Duolingo's own Zaria Parvez. This interview has been edited for time and clarity.
- [40:49]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah, hi, my name is Zaria. I'm the global Senior Social Media Manager at Duolingo and I've been here for about five years. I handle all of our content with my amazing content team that you see on our TikTok, our Instagram, our YouTube. So really just in it in the weeds with social at Duolingo. What a lot of people don't know is actually Duolingo was my first job out of college. Yeah. So I did not have a job before this, which is kind of crazy. But I grew up in Portland, Oregon and I attended University of Oregon. I studied marketing there and my focus was actually brand strategy. Then the pandemic came around when I graduated. So I was like a 2020 grad and I knew I wanted a job in marketing, but I was seeing what was out there. And I think like, for me, like my biggest thing is I really wanted to be like I always say I work best in the shadows and in the periphery. So like I wanted to be at a company that was kind of like still starting up with like their marketing. They weren't like number one in the game at the time, but also like a company that had a good ethos. So like that's kind of how I stumbled into like going to Pittsburgh, I guess from Portland and like finding Duolingo. And all of this was I just wanted to be at a company that was like inherently diverse and I thought, hey, like a place that teaches languages sounds like a pretty diverse place to be. And they had a social media coordinator role open When I was starting. Like I was interested in marketing, but I didn't know it was social and I was just more chasing the company versus the job. And I was like, I'm new, I'll figure it out. And if it's for me, great. If not, we can always pivot. But yeah, that's a little bit about me.
- [42:18]
Jamie Loftus
I hope this sounds like the compliment is intended to be. It makes so much sense that you're from Portland. It just really clarifies a lot that.
- [42:28]
Paige Desorbo
Makes me feel good because I miss Oregon every day.
- [42:31]
Jamie Loftus
In my experience in college, they weren't teaching the Internet correctly or. Well, I'm curious, how did you get drawn to marketing and how is it taught to you versus what the industry ended up being like?
- [42:45]
Paige Desorbo
That's such a cool question. I don't think I've ever been asked that before. I actually was in pre med. I, like every other Pakistani kid that I was going to become a doctor and quickly learned one quarter in that I am not good at chemistry. And it wasn't for me. But what I did really love about chemistry in general was like writing the lab reports. Like that for me was like, oh, this is fun. And like, especially the last part that's also like, explain why this matters in the world. And I think for me, like, that was kind of a moment where I was like, okay, I'm a good writer and like, I'm failing my chem test, but I'm doing well on lab reports. So maybe there's something here. And as people do in college, started exploring other things and just seeing what was out there. And advertising at University of Oregon is huge because like White and Kennedy, Nike, it like all comes from Oregon. So I knew of it and I just like took one class, one quarter and absolutely was like, yeah, this is what I want to do. I can be creative and I can write and I can create things and get paid fairly well for it. So, like, yeah, why would I not do this? And at my heart and at my core, even now, I still think I'm a writer. Like, writing is my true joy. Whether that's like comedy writing or like little captions or like the punchy lines that you see on Duo's TikToks or like Long form marketing just kind of became like my whole personality, which is kind of cringe. But in college I was like, like part of like our ad team and like went to nationals and like created campaigns for like Wienerschnitzel and like Adobe, which is so random. Very class president energy. But I just really fell in love with it. I loved the fact that it mixed art and science and I loved the fact that it was just like, it was just cool. Like, you could do cool things and create cool stuff and see it out in the world. But they did not teach social media. Like, going back and looking at these campaigns I made, they were like, yeah, we'll activate, maybe on TikTok. But social was, like, not there. I think what helped me stand out is I was just. I loved it as a consumer. Like, I was just on social. I always cared about my. My grids and how things looked. And that also, I think, is kind of what set us up for success here at Duo, in the sense where, like, I was kind of entering this job as, like, someone who just loves social media and, like, looking deeper into it versus, like, an advertiser who specializes in social media. Like, it allowed me to not work as an advertiser, and generally they just work as, like, a creator, which I think ultimately helped the brand because it allowed us to not be so caught up on, like, advertising things.
- [45:06]
Jamie Loftus
I do think it's interesting how little you were taught about social media in your marketing class, and now you are quite literally at the top of social media marketing because it wasn't necessarily what you learned at school. What was your relationship with the Internet like, growing up? What was your sort of flavor of being online? Growing up?
- [45:27]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah. So, I mean, I don't remember a life without an Internet. Like, I feel like that's always been around me. And then I think the funniest thing is I actually wasn't allowed to have social media until I was a junior in high school.
- [45:40]
Jamie Loftus
Did you secretly have it anyways?
- [45:42]
Paige Desorbo
Absolutely. Yes. So my favorite story is actually when I was in third grade, YouTube was, like, the big thing. Right. And so I actually got suspended for making a YouTube video that accidentally went viral. And it was. Yeah. And it was about why students shouldn't be attending my strict Catholic school. And, like, I was like. It was like, so, like, don't come here. Cause. But for some reason, it, like, blew up. And I got called to the principal's office, and I remember this so well. And she's like, and my dad was there, and my dad. My mom and dad both works. And, like, I always went to, like, after school things. Like, if my dad's there in the middle of the day, I'm like, I'm.
- [46:21]
Jamie Loftus
There's a problem.
- [46:22]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah. So I saw him and I was like, oh, but he wasn't, like, mad. Like, he was just sitting there neutral. So, like, okay, what's going on? And our principal's like, so we know you have a YouTube channel. And I was like, oh, God. Like, I was more worried about her saying that my dad getting mad. And she's like, you had this one video. And I was like, what are you talking? I was like. And it was like such a nothing video to me. And she was like, was it under your name? Yeah, it was under the mega freakable. That was my like, okay.
- [46:46]
Jamie Loftus
I was like, what was the username exactly?
- [46:49]
Paige Desorbo
And she was like, we have like, we're trying to fundraise for like this new school and like, this has blown up and it's inappropriate because you're like bashing the school and the program, whatever. And she's like, because of this, like, we'll be giving you like a one day suspension. And my dad was like, we were just like, okay. Like, it was really neutral. And I was like, he's going to like give it to me after we leave this meeting. We walk out. And he's like, well, at least you get a Monday off. And I was like, what is going on? Literally? And he was like, he's like, he's like, I saw it. He's like, Never make a YouTube video ever again and delete your account. Which happened. But he was like, I don't see any problem with that. He's like, I'm glad for you. I'm glad that you used your voice. And I'm like, great, thank you.
- [47:28]
Jamie Loftus
Okay, that's great.
- [47:30]
Paige Desorbo
And that was in third grade. So I think like, for me, like duo's personality of like being unhinged, being out of pocket, like, it's just kind of my personality in a way of like, I've always probably said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing and like working for a brand that has that Persona made it really easy. But yeah, that was just kind of my. My relationship with Social has just been like, I've always just been on it and used it and loved it.
- [47:53]
Jamie Loftus
How does your relationship with social media kind of evolve as you're growing up?
- [47:57]
Paige Desorbo
I loved it. Like, I was always on it. I cared about my, like getting my Instagram my junior year was like the biggest thing ever. Like, I was like, oh my God, I finally have an account. Loved Twitter. Had had the classic like mean girl Twitter moment with like, you know, your middle school enemies and like all of that stuff going on. Social was like, every part, like that was, was what I did in my free time. And it's like, I mean, obviously other activities too, but like, social was just always part of my life. Like it was never. That's why, like, it was like Never nothing. So, like, when I saw this, I was like, yeah, I could do social for a brand. Like, how hard can it be? Like, I know, like content basics. I know marketing basics. Like, how hard can it be to bring the expertise that I know personally with professional work? Which is a little naive, but maybe I needed that to have that confidence.
- [48:36]
Jamie Loftus
So, okay, so you get this job right out of college?
- [48:39]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah. So I was in Portland, but then I moved on my own because I just wanted to move to Pittsburgh in August of 2020. But our office didn't open until September of 2021 when like, we had people coming in. And that's actually when our like, TikTok really took off. So, like, I was doing like, so like, quote unquote boring social work for Duo too, for a year. Like, I was just figuring out like, what it even means to be working a 9 to 5 and what corporate life is.
- [49:04]
Jamie Loftus
How do people talk about Duo online? Because I feel like I've been seeing Duo with the gun for years.
- [49:11]
Paige Desorbo
Yes, when we started, the memes existed. We did not acknowledge them. Like, it was very like, brand safety. We can't say that. We can't do that. We're a language learning app. That means we have to have proper punctuation because people are gonna look to us, blah, blah, blah. Like, it was very much that way. And I mean, I was Neil's like, yeah, you're right. Like, who am I to like, change that? Like, I'm just here to clock in, clock out, create the content. So that's kind of how it started.
- [49:34]
Jamie Loftus
So that was. That was like the policy at the time.
- [49:36]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah, like, that's just what it was. I also wasn't like, we need to be doing this. Like, I. I didn't see it at that time. Cause I was still like, just how to navigate it. I think the switch kind of happened when that original, like learn Italian on TikTok and all that stuff started coming out. And it wasn't doing that well. And that was like the first time we actually put like investment into like a social platform. So like, money and budget were being put behind that. And they were like, yeah, we need to cut this. Like, this is not worth our spend. And it got to the point where I see I was like, TikTok's on a company priority. Like, we don't need to be doing this. And I remember at that point kind of feeling like, no, like TikTok still like works. We're just doing it wrong. And I think even that was like a year into my Career where I was, like, able to build more of a voice and build, like, more of an understanding of our brand and, like, just kind of absorb what it is to, like, work in social. And so then to my boss, she stopped that. We're like, okay, that's fine. Maybe that's just not the way to go about it. My boss, we got back into the office and this was my first day actually in the office during the pandemic. Like, after the pandemic, during the pandemic. So I walk in and this suit is, like, in this back corner. And this suit is actually. Was first made just for, like, hr, like, recruiting events. Like, just kind of internal things. It was never posted ever on any of our platforms. I was like, that's weird. Like, why is there just, like, an owl suit sitting by the market? Like, it looked weird. So we see it. And I, like, at the time, like, I was just on social and I was like, oh. Like, there's like, this trend that's like, how am I supposed to, like, live laugh love in these conditions? And I'm like, I literally feel like that right now, like, this, like, this is, like, staring at me. I'm in marketing and, like, a corporate office, and it's just like, whatever. And I was telling my boss about it. I was like, it'd be funny if we, like, filmed a TikTok of, like, me sitting here working and, like, this owl looking at me and being like, how am I supposed to live laugh love in these conditions? And she's like, yeah, that's funny. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's funny. Can you actually film me? And I. I think I have an idea here. Um, and so she's like, sure. So she grabbed her phone and we just put, like, the duo suit behind me and we filmed it with that audio and we posted it and it went stupid viral. And that was like, wait a minute. Like, there is something here with this suit and the comedy. And, like, since that day, like, five, like, four years ago, like, it's just been iterating and iterating and iterating on that core insight that, like, that suit is just ridiculous. And it's almost like a form of satire because marketing was so fresh at duolingo at that point. Like, we didn't have these systems even in place to, like, get marketing checks or, like, social checks. And, like, we're an engineering first org, like, respectfully, they didn't care about marketing at that point. Like, we were not a priority team. Like, which is fine. Like, that's Just how it was. That's how it was. But because there was. It was such a startup vibe and no one really cared, we had free rein to kind of just do whatever.
- [52:18]
Jamie Loftus
Seeing, like, the other sort of weird approaches to. To brands. Had you seen, like, the Wendy's Twitter back in the day? Was this stuff you were familiar with? Was. Was there any inspiration you were taking approaches?
- [52:31]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah, I think. I mean, I think everyone knew about Wendy's Twitter. Like, obviously. I think for me, though, it was never as an Internet person. I didn't care about brand Twitter or, like, brand talk. I guess now is what, like. And, like, when I grew, like, that was not who I was following. Like, yeah, I would hear the couple clapbacks from Wendy.
- [52:48]
Jamie Loftus
It's.
- [52:48]
Paige Desorbo
And, like, that went super viral, but it was never like, oh, this is my source of inspiration. I think more of what was my source of inspiration for Social and how I wanted to build duo on, like, TikTok particularly was the success the character has had on the app and, like, the funny sentences or, like, the things people are already sharing. And I actually think a lot of brands do have memes already made about them. They're just scared to lean in like, we were. But, like, my whole thing was like, okay, like, we've had a couple of Twitter moments that Community has made, like, do it with a gun. Like, how do I bring that to life on TikTok? Like, that was my job, was translating that. So I think my inspiration was actually more of, like, how our designers and product team and content team built our app to be, like, naturally gamified and interesting and getting people to make fan art about it or getting people to talk about the different dynamics of the characters, there's something there. If people are organically talking about a brand, because no one really does that on Social. At least I still don't. I mean, I do a little bit for my job. Outside of that, I feel like if I didn't work in marketing, I probably would not care about brands on social. So that was really cool to me that people were. They cared about this brand for some reason.
- [53:55]
Jamie Loftus
When you start getting kind of, like, a longer leash to try weirder stuff, it seems like the whole office is on board and is, like, regularly cast and stuff.
- [54:05]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah. So I always say that, like, the number one person that believed in me was obviously my boss who filmed the first video, and then Mark Pavik, who wore the duo suit for me. Okay, that was a question I had. Yeah.
- [54:19]
Jamie Loftus
So is it the same guy in the suit?
- [54:22]
Paige Desorbo
It changes now. Now that Our team grown and evolved. We like hire dancers and stuff because Mark does have a full time job at Duolingo. That's not doing that. Before everything blew up, I was like, I have these ideas but like no one wants to film with me. Like, can you? Because I just know you like just working together. And he was like, yeah, of course. I don't know. I feel like I literally owe my career to him. And like Michaela, who was my first boss because they believed in me and they did it and then the video started popping off and doing well. And the other person that really believed in me was our legal. Legal. Steve was like, I love what you're doing on TikTok. Like here's some trends I see or here's some things we can do or like, how do we make this like streamline? So it wasn't like, I think that's what's so special about Duo is because it was so small and startupy, it never had these like social versus legal or social versus like it was never that energy. And because we started off so viral early on, we've kind of just kept that energy to never exist because we never knew a world where that existed.
- [55:14]
Jamie Loftus
Does the staff there skew younger? Generally?
- [55:18]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah. I mean, yeah, we definitely do have some like more seasoned marketing people, but they're very like we hired a. So like because I was the only social coordinator at the time, they're like, we hired you because we know we're bad at this and we need to be better at it. So please do it. Like that was the mentality. And then as I hired my team out, I think I'm the eldest and I'm like, it's crazy cause I'm so used to being the youngest but like I was the youngest on the team but now I'm 27 and like our team spans from like 21 to 24. So like it's a very young team. But we also have like like millennials as well on our team that like help us with like other things. So it's like we kind of just all use our assets as like across age ranges. I actually really need like my role manager's like expertise and like how do you navigate a strategy and sell it? Like how do you show that like the impact I have actually matters? So like that's important. Right? Then I also need like the 20 year old on my team of like what does, what is Gen Alpha into now? Cause like I'm not Gen Alpha and like to help bring that to life. So I think Everyone just plays their part in a really different way. So, as you know, I love writing, so I always believe that, like, as humans, we're natural storytellers, and, like, that is what brands want to do. But we're so obsessed with telling our own story that we're not listening, I guess, to the stories that, like, other people are saying, which sounds like, so, like. But, like, other stories, like, people are putting Duo with a gun. Like, that's a story too. All right. So, like, for me, it's like, the.
- [56:40]
Jamie Loftus
Greatest story ever told.
- [56:41]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah, exactly. And I think that for me was like, how do I. I build almost a sitcom around this character and show these different storylines. And, like, we all have the tropes, right? Like, there's the lover, there's the enemy. There's the, like, hero's journey, there's the struggle, there's the things they love, the things they hate. And, like, why can't brands have that? Especially when you have a character involved. Like, yeah, like, I'm gonna do it. And the only way to do it is to just keep exposing the audience to it. So, like, that was, like, where Dua Lipa came from. And the insight is just like, Duolingo just sounds like Dua Lipa. So we're like, duh.
- [57:14]
Jamie Loftus
People are saying that anyways. Yeah, yeah.
- [57:17]
Paige Desorbo
And she's hot, so we're like, perfect. That's who, like, Duo's gonna be upset. Like, that's his love interest or, like, just kind of integrating the way that we know how to tell stories as humans or the stories that we enjoy and just finding the pieces that need to be filled and figuring out who those are was like, I think, kind of how we built our strategy around it.
- [57:34]
Jamie Loftus
Has there been any sort of pitch that you've experienced pushback on?
- [57:38]
Paige Desorbo
Oh, all the time, actually. Like the Scrub Daddy video. Our CEO Mess messaged me to take it down, but it already. I was like, it already made its round. Striking. I'll take it down.
- [57:46]
Jamie Loftus
Is the original not up?
- [57:47]
Paige Desorbo
Because I remember it's not.
- [57:48]
Jamie Loftus
I think it's on the reboot.
- [57:49]
Paige Desorbo
It's a different one. So the story around this was something I was trying to do at that stage in my career was like, how do I find more like minded, like, brands and social teams to, like, kind of amplify our presence, like, as just being content creators? And the Scrub Daddy team was a team that I really looked up to. They made really funny content. And it literally was just like, hey, guys, do you guys want to do, like, a free content club? Like, like, we'll bring the duo suit. You bring the scrub daddy suit. Come to the office. We'll create stuff. We're like, all right, this is like, what we want to do. And then they were like, oh, we created these cute little duo sponges. And I was like, oh, those are cute babies. And that was kind of it. And we were creating content. And I was like, guys, what if, like, I've been seeing this, like, pregnancy, like, TikTok going off? I don't know, like, it was so crazy, very trad wife kind of stuff. And I was like, what if we use this glad you came with this video? And they were like, yeah, yeah, why not? So we, like, filmed it, we put it up, we posted it, and it blew up. And I think, like, for us, and this is actually also, in a sense happened with the dead duo. We kind of forget like, how attached people are to duo. That, like, we're so lost in the sauce sometimes that we're like, yeah, we'll post it and it'll go viral, I guess. Like, maybe you won't even go that far or maybe. Maybe a million views. And then people are like, no, no, we like this. And now it's like lore. When we posted that, it stayed up for like four hours. And our CEOs like, Guys, we cannot be doing this. And I was like, okay, great, I'll take it down. However, what do you not like about it? He's like, the visual's weird, but, like, he's like, more than that. The glad you came makes it, like, really weird. So I was like, okay, what if I repost it? But just don't add that part to the top. Like, the glad you came and changed the audio. And he's like, okay, fine. Like, it's always a negotiation for, like, these high risk moments, and it's never a. Like, take it down, you're in trouble. How dare you do this to our brand? Like, it's not punishment. It's like we're iterating and learning, and the only way you know where the line is is until you cross it on social. Because social changes every day. Honestly, like, the people that are most upset about duo things are marketers. Like, usually our. And that's where we were like, well, who are we prioritizing? Like, if we see this negative sentiment going up, like, who's driving this? And 90% of the time it's someone who works in marketing that's just, like, upset about us not having the clear brand guidelines and strategy and things that we've all learned to do. While our audience is like, we love it and we're getting new users. So I'm like, our priority is always gonna be our new users and new business. While, like, obviously, like, we love marketers and want them to enjoy what we're doing. But, like, when we prioritize, like, how we assess risk, it's always gonna have, like, our users first. I think what was cool is like, we have a how did you hear about us? Survey, which before just existed as an onboarding survey when you joined. And it would say, like, did you learn about us from friends, from family, from Google, whatever? And as our TikTok started blowing up, we were like, what if we just add TikTok to that and see, like, who knows? Because at the time we were like, impressions, great, brand awareness done. And then it was like, maybe there is a tie. And then we just added TikTok. And every time we had a viral video, like a video over a million views, bam. A spike in your users, bam. It would keep, like, we would keep seeing it. And then that's also when SLT and senior leadership was like, let them cook. And that's literally what it's been like, which is so awesome. And I think the origin stories of how we almost worked backwards has worked out well. And now it's funny because you'll see SLT pitch ideas to us and they're like, will they accept it? Will they greenlight it? Which is different than a lot of social teams where they're hoping that their senior leadership allows them to post what they want to post.
- [61:19]
Jamie Loftus
Right? You have the power.
- [61:20]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah, exactly.
- [61:22]
Jamie Loftus
And we'll be right back with more Zaria Parvez and horny little owl.
- [61:33]
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Paige Desorbo
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Jevon
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- [62:43]
Zaria Parvez
Oh, wow, a real person.
- [62:45]
Jamie Loftus
Yep.
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Jevon
I'm here to help with everything from selecting the perfect window treatments to.
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Jamie Loftus
Well, I've got a complicated project.
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Jevon
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Jamie Loftus
I didn't realize you did that.
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Jevon
We can also send you samples fast and free.
- [63:02]
Jamie Loftus
Wow. I mean, I always thought I needed a designer to come to my home, but scheduling is always a nightmare.
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Jevon
Notwithblinds.com, we're on your schedule. And there's no haggling pressure or hidden fees either.
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Paige Desorbo
Hmm.
- [63:14]
Zaria Parvez
I just might have to do more.
- [63:16]
Jevon
Whatever you need. How about you tell me what you had in mind?
- [63:20]
Jamie Loftus
Okay, then. So the first room we're looking at is for guests coming over, and I'm thinking of something.
- [63:25]
Paige Desorbo
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- [63:39]
Zaria Parvez
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- [64:49]
Jamie Loftus
Welcome back to 16th minute. I'm in the middle of reading that new tell all memoir about working high up at Facebook. And guys, I think this Mark Zuckerberg guy might be kind of a bad fella.
- [65:02]
Paige Desorbo
Mark, he's wired in. Sorry? He's wired in.
- [65:05]
Jamie Loftus
Is he yes, about now.
- [65:08]
Chumba Casino Spokesperson
You still wired in?
- [65:09]
Jamie Loftus
Here's the rest of my interview with Zaria Parvez.
- [65:12]
Paige Desorbo
A big part of my, like, what I've been working on, honestly, like, this past half and, like, this year is evolving our brand. And what does that look like? So we actually started, like, a writer's room where I brought in people who are, like, I've always enjoyed their work, love them, think they're smart, and they have no care about duolingo. Like, let, like, come in and, like, just tell me, like, how you would. Like, how would you advertise duolingo music? And, like, I gave. Pretty much gave them no context, barely any brief, just to see what they would come out with. And I, like, never want unhinged to just be, like, our crutch. So I like, for me, it's like, we should be unhinged to be funny. Like, it shouldn't just be, like, showing duo's butt just to get engagement. Like, it needs to have, like, a reason why we're being unhinged because that makes it. That just makes a joke smarter and funnier. Whoa. Like, you guys just put duo's butt on national tv. Like, as brands, we try to strategize everything so much. And, like, humans don't think in strategy. Like, some of these things are serendipitous and good moments. And, like, I always say it was like, 75% luck, honestly, that it took off and then like, what, 75 was? 20. Yeah, 20. 25. I'm like, wait, 200 and then 25%.
- [66:20]
Jamie Loftus
Of, like, glad you went into marketing.
- [66:22]
Paige Desorbo
I know, right? Lol. I was like, I need to duolingo math. But, like, 25% of just, like, us optimizing it and, like, leaning in and, like, taking advantage of the moment. Because it's so sad when I see, like, something viral that a brand can let, like, you know, lean into and they don't, and I'm like, just take advantage of it. But, yeah, I think that that's the cool part about it is we were allowed to take advantage of that moment.
- [66:44]
Jamie Loftus
So how did dead duo. But that sounded like sort of a full company collaboration.
- [66:49]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah. So essentially what happened was, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, every maybe like, four months, the product team does an app icon change where the normal duo green owl on your phone changes to a different emotion or something. Just something different. And the whole point is for you to be on your phone and you're so used to seeing that green bird, and all of a sudden, like, like, it's sick and there's like a big booger coming out and you're like, ew, what is that? And that resurrects new users. Something we realized though is like, when it's an emotion, like we did it with sick Duo, we did it with like a wrinkly face, like old looking Duo, that when it has a user emotion or something, people talk a lot about it on social. Then we were like, okay, this works well when social works with product. Next time around, let's build another campaign. And again, maybe it'll do well, like, whatever. And what happened is product a B test best two things. So they had a dead duo and I think they had like a crying duo. They both kind of came out the same, like marketing. Like, since you already kind of did a campaign before, what, what do you want to do? Like, for us, it's kind of the same. And I was like, I think we should do dead Duo because it's an emotion. Like, people can react and relate to it and then they'll probably post about it and we can actually build a storyline around it. And originally it was just supposed to be four posts. He died. We announced his death, show the funeral, cause of death, then we resurrect him. And that and the whole brand messaging behind that was to be like, Duo would fake his own death just for you to do your lesson. Like, there's nothing this bird won't do for you to just open your damn phone. So we posted this fake PR statement and it blew up, like, yeah, virality beyond I've ever even seen. And I think being in Pittsburgh, you're kind of in your own little, like, bubble. Cause you're like, you're not New York, you're not in la, you're not in these big cities. When we're like, oh, we were gonna post just like the funeral video tomorrow, but we should, should post it now. People want answers. And so then we post the funeral video and then we're like, wait, what if we also kill the other characters and like say they're also dead? And like, that's like how it kind of kept building, like the narrative. Like these posts started entering that weren't part of our original social plan. And we're like, oh, dang, we really did build an icon and we killed him and people cared. And I think for us that was a realization moment too of like, what did we just do? And so like, that was, that was really fun. And we've just, we got to work with different team members to just bring it to life in different ways. And it was, it was such a joy. I. It was like one of my highlights of my career, for sure.
- [69:10]
Jamie Loftus
Part of the reason you went to Duolingo is because it was a company that aligned with your values, which I know when we're talking about marketing and advertising in general, that is a minefield to find a place that you feel good about.
- [69:27]
Adam and Eve Spokesperson
Yeah.
- [69:28]
Jamie Loftus
And now just having been in advertising your entire professional life, what are your feelings on that? How have you seen that sort of manifest in other areas of this industry?
- [69:37]
Paige Desorbo
So I was able to intern in the advertising agency my junior year summer. I think the first reaction I had was like, oh, it's like really white. And like I grew up like, very proudly Pakistani, very proudly Muslim. Like, it was just such a different lifestyle, I think. And it was really weird to like walk into a space where like New York City's one of the most diverse cities right. Ever in the world, and then you just walk in and you're like, there's literally no one that looks like me. And I think that's also like, candidly, a lot of Muslims also don't enter communications fields because naturally most of us tend to be kids of immigrants and immigrants care about sciences and arts and not, not art, sorry, not arts, but like sciences and math. And so like a lot of people come, engineers and doctors and like, we don't enter communications fields. And then we ask, hey, like, why are Muslims being like badly represented in media? And I'm like, because it's. None of us are there. Like, we're not prioritizing, like being in these spaces and that's going to have ramifications. And so for me, like, that was kind of a big wake up call during like this experience. And like nothing like happened. It just felt weird. And my entire thesis in college that I was writing for graduation was actually about like a playbook of how to advertise to Muslims and communicate with Muslims and like, what does that look like? So part of that playbook was like, all about like diversity marketing in a sense. And like, what's the right appropriate way to go about it? But also like a part of was like exploring like, who are like the five Muslims in marketing? Because I can barely find any. And interviewing them being like, how did you end up here? And like, what is the situation? And like now in my five years, I've seen it grow and expand and I'm so glad to see that there's more diversity there. But like, like, it was just a really interesting wake up call for me where I Was like, I. I feel happy and most creative in places that I feel safe. And so, like, that's where kind of how Duolingo fit into the narrative. Where I was like, this seems like a company that has to be inherently diverse because you need people to speak different languages. And usually people who speak different languages come from different parts of the world and have to be part of this mission. And then the co founders themselves are both immigrants. So it was just like, so many levels of, oh, this makes sense. And like, I remember when I accepted the job, Duolingo marketing was not anything. And I remember, like, I was a top performer at University of Oregon. It was like, you're gonna go to Nike and wedding Kennedy and do all this stuff. And I remember accepting it and somebody like, straight up being like, that was the biggest mistake you've ever done. Like, you should not, like, why are you doing that? Like, why'd you give up an agency? Like, because I had an agency offer at the time and it was like a whole thing. And I was like, stressed. Like, I was like, did I just, like, throw away my career? Like, I don't even know what I'm doing. But I just. Something in my gut just felt safe there. Like, talking to the people in the interview process. I was like, this is just what I want to do and I'm just going to try it and do it. And it worked out. That safety feeling also working in a place where you just feel comfortable. Like, I was allowed to be myself, which means I was allowed to be unhinged and weird, which means I was allowed to post these things. Like, it creates an environment of, like, safety and creativity and, like, bringing in different ways of thinking. And like I always say, like, being an immigrant kid, like, I was a third culture kid. I knew how to, like, be white enough for my white friends at school and be brown enough for my parents at home and, like, navigate literally jumping between different audiences and different groups and different people. And that's what you have to do in marketing. You have to know how to talk to different people in their own language. So, like, third culture kids are like, set up for this. They just need the space and the opportunity to do it. So that's also why I think Duolingo is so successful, is because we focused on that third culture energy in that space. And sometimes you'll still see tiktoks in Urdu that were reaching a new audience and still go viral. Because it's stuff that I know or I'm really intentional about. Our team, I want our team to be as diverse as possible. And we have people from all walks of life, all backgrounds. No one on my content team actually has a traditional marketing background, or if they do, it's very lightly touched. Our production assistant, for example, saw her volunteering somewhere and I was like, I just like the way you work with, like, the systems of the people here. I think you could be a great pa. Would you like to, like, join? So, like, she does that, which is, like, crazy. Even, like, our content designer, she got rejected from Duolingo, from Duolingo's illustration and design team. And I was like, cool, I'll take you. And like, it's like, stuff like that where it's just like, I. I love the underdogs because I think those stories are like, the people who try the hardest, who want to do the best, and just never got the opportunity to do it. For me, like, even brands that, like, because I'm so part of Gen Z and like, brands that I like, I'm actually not a brand talk person in general. Like, I'm like, I work on this. I don't want to see it outside of it. But like, any brands that I do follow where, like, either I really care about their founder's ethos or, like, you know, it's just more like there's some responsibility or accountability there that feels like they care and people can see right through it when it's not the last thing.
- [74:30]
Jamie Loftus
I wanted to talk about burnout and protecting yourself.
- [74:33]
Paige Desorbo
Yes.
- [74:35]
Jamie Loftus
How do you manage that? And I know that no one has the answer, but I'm curious how you've had to sort of manage that throughout your career.
- [74:42]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah. So for me, I am so grateful that I was able to skyrocket to so much success so early on. Like, I remember when I got Forbes 30 or 30 at, like, 22 years old, I was like, whoa. I'm not just saying that to be like, like, who lives here? You know what I mean? But, like, it was just. It felt really surreal. But the drawback of that was like, I don't think I got the opportunity to make mistakes because every mistake I made was in public. And I don't think it's anyone's fault. Like, I, like, it's not like, oh, do overworked me, or like, I did this. Like, it was just the reality of this situation. And, like, I'm glad I took ownership of the work. I'm glad I stood up and said, hey, that was me that created it. But at the same time, like, that created this mental load on myself to the point where I actually took a medical leave last year for, like, five months of just, like, sorry, not five months. Five weeks. I wish it was five months. And I remember telling my boss, I was like, I'm, like, not well. Like, I feel anxious coming into the office. I'm scared of something flopping. I'm scared of, like, what people will say about me. Like, I don't want my face being seen anywhere. I get anxiety. Like, and that's not me. Like, I feel very fortunate. My entire life, I've never actually had, like, crazy any, like, mental health issues. And I was happy with, like, who I was and what I wanted to do. And I was like, I'm just burnt out and I just need time away from the spotlight. Like, I just need a break to reset and recharge. And I'm lucky I'm at a place that, like, allowed that and supported that. And, like, everyone knew. I wrote about it too. Like, I said, I loved writing. I wrote about it on my LinkedIn and I shared it. And it was. It was one of those things where, like, as social managers, like, we're always expected to wear so many hats that, like, at some point the hats get heavy and it's like, I can't do this. I came back and I remember my biggest thing was, like, I just never. I never want to feel burnout, and I never want to make other people feel burnout around me, especially my team after going through what I went through. And I think what I really hang on to is, like, creativity ebbs and flows, and, like, we need to be mindful of that. If, if you want impact, you have to have those moments of, like, ebbs. You have to be okay with, like, not posting stuff for a couple weeks. You have to be okay with, like, people saying, I need time off, or, hey, I need to work. Leave work early, or, hey, I need to work from home today. Like, this is overwhelming. Like, that needs to be okay and, like, accepted and part of your strategy and part of your, like, team structure. So, no, I don't have a cure to burnout, but I think for me, that's what I really try to do of, like, I am very aware of it and I just try to find moments of, like, I never want you to feel like all you are to me is like, an impression generator. Like, feel creative when you feel creative, and let's figure out how you can work at it. That's kind of how I've been approaching it. I don't know if it's the right way or the wrong way, but it's working relatively so some quarters are gonna be great and some aren't. And not everyone is meant to go viral and if they were, then virality wouldn't exist. That's just part of the cycle of the Internet in life. So as more Gen Z become role managers who have been through the ringer, how they act and behave and hopefully prevent burnout thank you so much again.
- [77:45]
Jamie Loftus
To Zaria for her time and her work. I want her to be a comedy writer so bad. Follow her at the links in the description. And with that dear listener, we emerge from the sacred wood of sentient brand marketing on social media. And where does this leave us? I don't know, honestly. While I'm very grateful grateful to the marketing professionals and just kind people who lent their time and experience to make this series possible, it still does give me some uneasiness about the future of what marketing is going to look like on the Internet. And as some listeners were right to point out, representing a company online that is very often clout chasing on Internet trends can lead an often does lead to something called digital blackface, which is defined by CNN's John Blake as, quote, a practice where white people co opt online expressions of black imagery, slang, catchphrases or culture to convey comic relief or express emotions, unquote. Although I would say in the case of this discussion as there are obviously non white people in corporate marketing. Although as Zaria pointed out, this is itself is still a very white dominated space that digital blackface has been used as a way for companies to seem as if they're a part of the mainstream Internet culture that like so many creative worlds has been innovated by black artists and creators before having that work co opted by white people or just capitalism in general. Gen Alpha is the first generation to truly have no memory of what it's like to build a sense of self free from the Internet. And it remains to be seen what that's going to mean down the line. Because I don't mean to fear Monger, I genuinely don't know. These will be my kids, my nieces, my nephews, and the only thing I think you can do that's more unproductive and self sabotaging than assume your children's generation is going to ruin the world is that your children's generation is solely responsible responsible for saving the world. It does freak me out that kids are more vulnerable than ever to this kind of advertising, and it's a relief when that advertising is for something as innocuous as learning a second language. But in the big picture, it's hard to say. I have plenty of young parents in my family and friend groups who are trying to shield their kids from pernicious, ambitious marketing, but let's be honest, we're not going to be any more successful than our parents were. Think of virtually every social media manager you've heard from in this series. Serenity Disco found themselves on live journaling sites before becoming the Denny's Tumblr. Amy Brown was Amy from MySpace before becoming the Wendy's Twitter. Nathan Allebach was an anti capitalist musician before translating that ethos to the Stakem Twitter. Zaria Parvez was the kid that was scolded out of taking down a Catholic school in the third grade before becoming the Horny Duolingo bird. As long as there are creative kids, they're going to get around what their parents don't want them to access. And all of these social media managers and writers are talented, funny, creative of people who have had to make a living. I think it's a little bit too easy to criticize this class of writer before considering how lucky or more often financially privileged you need to be just to be able to write without worrying where your next rent check is coming from, your health care, whatever it may be. Most of us are serving a machine and to be able to extract yourself from that is a tremendous privilege. But that also doesn't mean that it's the only way to make ends meet. And I feel to some extent like I'm blowing hot air here. I probably am, because I'm broadcasting this on iHeartradio. And while I've been really lucky to have basically full creative control of my work here, it's because it's monetized to serve something larger than myself. So I'm certainly not above this. And any criticism of this environment is a criticism of myself too. The only conclusion I can ever come to is that what would resolve this kind of creativity having to be used to sell something is a public reinvestment into arts and affirming it as something that's important, which under the current American administration. Best of luck, but we should keep talking about it. This weirdly tapers into what we're going to be talking about next week. And so with a little luck and a little bit of revolutionary action, sentient two horny brands your 16th minute ends now. 16th minute is a production of cool zone meat media and iheartradio. It is written, hosted and produced by me, Jamie Lockless. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad13. Voice acting is from Grant Crater and pet shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my cats Flea and Casper and my pet rock bird who will outlive us all. Bye.
- [83:29]
Adam and Eve Spokesperson
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