← The Marketing Millennials
The Marketing Millennials
The Social Media Marketing Masterclass with Zaria Parvez, Head of Social at DoorDash, ex-Duolingo | Ep. 362
00:39:00
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- [00:00]
A
Stuck in meetings, email loops and common threads trying to clarify feedback. Get unstuck with Loom AI powered video communication that lets you record your screen, camera and voice to communicate fast. Try loom today@loom.com. that's L O O M dot com. Welcome to a very special episode of the Market Millennials podcast. We recorded this one live at Markieland Festival 2025 and got such great feedback. If you've been anywhere near social media in the last few years, you know, when brands talk about their dream social strategy, there's one name that always comes up, and that's Duolingo. And you hear, I want to be the Duolingo of social. You've heard it, everyone's heard it. Well, today we have one of the masterminds behind Duolingo's viral unhinged social growth. This is someone who took a crusty owl suit from an HR closet and turned it into a cultural icon who Grew Duolingo from 50k to 16 million followers, who faked the death of a MazeScot and generated 1.7 billion impressions. That's three Super bowl ads worth with basically no budget and no agency. And now she's bringing all that genius to Doordash as the new head of social, please welcome to the podcast, Zaria. Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guest stories or didn't happen. Get ready to turn the off. Welcome, Zaria. Welcome to marketing land. Thank you so much for being here.
- [02:02]
B
Thank you so much for having me. I'm stoked to be here today.
- [02:05]
A
I'm super excited to chat because as everybody knows, and if you haven't been on social media, Duolingo is like the gold standard. When people say they want to be something on social, they're like, I want to be the Duolingo of social and social. So. And we have one of the amazing masterminds behind Duolingo. So thank you so much for being here.
- [02:28]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [02:30]
A
So you've helped duolingo grow from 50k to 16 million followers. What were the first levers you pulled to start that growth engine?
- [02:43]
B
Yeah, I think first and foremost, the story of how really like, we leaned in is kind of one that I think is. It's a little bit sweet looking back, but I essentially started at Duolingo as our first social media hire. I was a new grad out of college. I was About a year into the job here, and TikTok just kept getting bigger and bigger. And this was right after the pandemic. So people were, like, hungry for video content and just seeing what other people were doing. And we wanted to make content and just figure it out like a lot of other brands. And the first content we actually started off with was like, learning content, kind of what you'd expect from a language learning app, like slang words, or using different creators and really investing in different faces of the brand. And then when I came into the office, I noticed that we actually had this big crusty owl suit from HR events that was sitting in near the marketing team. And at the time, I asked my role manager, saying, like, hey, I have, like, some ideas for TikTok. I think it might be helpful to try using our mascot as just, like the character face. There's already some memes about him on Twitter. Maybe we lean into that. Let's just, like, see where we can go. And so I pretty much laid out, like an audio. I pitched the idea with a caption on screen, and she actually recorded me. And then we posted it, and it was something almost as simple as that. And it took off, and then we started to see that, okay, when we use the owl, when we use these trends, we can really optimize on, like, these human moments that we're all sharing collectively. And it can kind of be its own force. It doesn't necessarily need to be like this extended lever of, like, campaigns, but it can actually be its own existence. And we as a brand can be known for our socials if we're not known for our campaigns yet. So that's kind of how the magic started. And it really grew into how do we scale day to day content? How do we hire a team of creators and doers? How do we find the right people to represent this brand? And what does that look like and how does that evolve? And so within the five years I've been here, it's gone from duo having snarky remarks to having babies with mascots to eventually dying and really just building up this whole lore around this character that just started as a crusty owl suit in our office.
- [05:06]
A
Yeah, I would love to go into that. I mean, it was genius idea, but it's also like, the best ideas come from just. It's also crazy how good ideas come from when you're in office with all creative people and you see what's around and you just pick things up. But I wanted to go into, like, your framework of how you do the storytelling, because it is this whole story with the mascot. And how do you think about every next step? Like, how. How far out are you planning these videos? Cause I know you're also using trends as well. So the mixture of trends and planning out storylines.
- [05:43]
B
Yeah. So a lot of it is like, how do we ride the trend in a way that can build duolingo's lore? So every piece of content you see, I say it's almost like a sitcom. Like we're trying to tell a different story every time. Just for you to know one more thing about duo. So for us, if you're 1% better or 1% more clear about duo or duolingo or a cast of characters, for us that's a. So we really started to create duolingo's world. And I think that started with like figuring out, like, what are the principles that we want to apply to our social. And a lot of it actually isn't social strategy that we know traditionally. One big principle that I really apply with my team is the rules of improv. And how do you like, what makes like a funny bit funny? What makes something iconic, what makes a moment that you have to roll with the punches, like make you laugh out loud and entertain you. And improv is probably the closest, I think, like match to that. We have a little bit more prep time, I think, than someone who's on stage. But we really. Yes. And what we do, we try not to be blockers. Like, it's really hard for an idea to get rejected at duo. And then I think lastly, we also really commit to the bit. So if we've decided we're doing something, we're gonna go 120% in. And that's really how we built out our strategy of creating content and creating a team that like works on this day to day content machine.
- [07:12]
A
I think one thing, I mean, you've written about this too is you do internally a writer's room. Could you, yeah. Say how you've set that up? Like, what does a writer's room look like? And how is it an ideation session for social.
- [07:27]
B
Yeah. So we have our internal team which works on the day to day brand. We know our brand backwards and forwards, but our writers room are actually external writers that I've honestly just people I've admired in the industry, people I've admired doing great work. They are usually comedians. And their whole task is to essentially roast the brand, I guess in a way where, like, if you were to write an SNL skit about duolingo, what would you write and how would that look like? And we kind of focus on different topics each week. So sometimes it's duo, sometimes it's a different world character, sometimes it's what's going on in culture. And you really have them figure out how to write about it in a way that's unique to them. And then we always believe we can scale back, but we should let them kind of go wild and see where the limits are. And for us, I think we always walk the line, but we never cross the line. So that's where we try to think of like what is a space that we can navigate that is still bold and people are talking about us, but obviously like to our best intent, not getting canceled. So that writers room meets weekly alongside a different internal content creation team. So there's like these two work streams working at both times. So business as usual, but also grinding and expanding on new lore and new ideas.
- [08:41]
A
I think that's awesome that I mean, sometimes as a social team you get so caught up in what you're doing in the day to day that you don't see missing opportunities. So just bringing it outside voices to just poke holes in what you're doing as a social person because you're in it every single day. It's hard and you need some, some type of outside force to sometimes push you a little bit as a social person.
- [09:12]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And it just makes you think different really is what we're always trying to do is is there something we've missed and something we can lean into?
- [09:20]
A
One thing I think for people out there, I know Duolingo is known as an unhinged brand, but how did you get those internal approvals and get to the stage where people are trusting you to just post and not be pigeonholed all these ideas that you have?
- [09:41]
B
Yeah. So I think the biggest. So the biggest thing that I had to my benefit was I was a one person social team at an engineering forest Org. So that means marketing inherently wasn't. It wasn't as developed when I joined. So they were really looking for anyone with great ideas to just push the narrative forward, which is exciting. Like, I think that's one of the big benefits of working at a startup. Since then I feel like we've changed from startup to traditional brand. And what I say for that is like, now I've really learned what are like the one or two things that every stakeholder cares about and how do we incorporate that into the final product. And usually everybody wants the brand to be successful. It's just different ways of going about that. So for me it's a lot of, I guess, low key emotional manipulation. But like on like a more serious level it's really understanding what the priorities are and how do we get buy in for like why we believe an idea works. And I think because we have a little bit more clout at Duolingo for the social stuff that we initially did, we can now use that to like sway a narrative, sway a campaign. I still want the record to be clear that there are still moments where the Social team has no power, has no sway and we have to post and resize an asset. And I think accepting that is also like part of the gig too. Of like sometimes there's battles worth fighting and sometimes they're not worth fighting. And we've just really figured out of like at least if we can have one campaign that Social first, a quarter that's completely from us, I'm totally okay reposting something else from another team that might not be necessarily social first, but it's about carving in that area and space that you still do have full agency over and like owning that socially through and through and then kind of using that in mixture with like what other people want you to post.
- [11:30]
A
This is an important thing, word you're saying and phrase you're saying is like social first. Could you describe what a social first campaign and how it comes Social first? Because I think most, not many people, they'll come up with a campaign. It's like, okay, we're going to run ads and then we're going to run email and then social is like a part of it. But this is. You really create a campaign where social is the star and every other channel is built around it. So how do you, how does that work?
- [11:59]
B
Yeah, so at Duo I would say social is king because that's what we've been known for and where we started, which is like a really fortunate position to be in. But pretty much we use exclusively organic channels. Like that is how we distribute our content. So if we're going to distribute our content on these social channels, every campaign has to be optimized to what a social audience enjoys. So that actually means that we have really limited, like paid media in the US we have really limited out of home, we have really limited TV spots. So everything is like, okay, if it can get on tv, great, but if it isn't like how does this. It's going to live on social. So how do we make sure the audience is understanding what's really hard is like obviously creating your Own trend and own moments. Like, we're probably, as a brand, 2%, if we're lucky, of somebody's day. And so, like, how do I make that 2% relevant when it's a completely new story, which is like, something we still struggle with, or like our most viral content has always been trend jacking. And now we're trying to think of, like, what is a narrative that can really, like, shake up the Internet. And I think that's where Dead Duo came from. I think that was a truly inherently social first moment of, like, the way that we unleashed it, the way that the narrative was built. There was no, like, here fancy hero campaign video. It was all, like, social posts that was planned out across this week of this is how it's gonna go down. And all of it was created in house. So it's about, like, the visual of it, understanding the craftsmanship that has to go into it, and the narrative that a social audience will grab onto versus, like an audience watching TV or an audience scrolling elsewhere.
- [13:38]
A
Since you brought it up, I was going to bring it up a little later, but you brought up Death by Duo campaign. Could you go through the initial thought process to how you built it out and maybe a little set up for people who don't know what you did. But I think it's so cool, like, how you. You wrote about it on LinkedIn too. So everybody who wants, like, the more in depth, go to Zarya's LinkedIn and subscribe to a newsletter. It's great. But yeah, for anybody who doesn't know.
- [14:10]
B
Yeah. So essentially, the origins of it were, as the marketing is known for being unhinged. On Duolingo, there is this push for the product and marketing to be more joint together. So it really brings people back to the app. It brings people back to language learning. So one way to do that, to really marry the unhingedness of our marketing, but also the seriousness of our product was through that we call app icon changes. So essentially every every four to five months, an app, our app icon changes to something new. And the whole point is that the duo face changes and the hope is that we get resurrected users. More people join the app because the icon looks different on their home screen screen. Usually this would happen in the product world, and then marketing land is marketing land. And that's just how it worked. But this time we had the idea of, like, what if we actually work together to, like, create a whole narrative around this? And so the product team said, all right, there's two icons. We're testing one with like these dead eyes and then one with like, I think Duo sideways. And the way that we determine is we actually a B test this to a small experimental group. And then if we see like an uptick in users based on one, we usually go forward with that one. And by the way, it's gonna go live in a week. So if you wanna do marketing for it, you have a week to do it. And you won't know like what it is until seven days before. Cause we have to AB test. So they AB test and they both came out like neutral. Like they were like, it actually doesn't matter. Turns out we're getting the same type of new users from each. So marketing, what do you wanna do? And for us, that's where like these X's over the I's. Like, for us, like, we can tell a really great social narra the death of Duo and how he died. And like, we think you guys should go with this one because it matches a marketing narrative that we can really push through. And because there was no impact on the app, they were like, sure, okay, let's do it. So we had seven days to bring it to life. And the whole concept was, duo will do anything for you. Do your lesson, including faking his death. So we kind of made it into a who done it? Where like every post we did for a week was like a new clue, a new hint. And we started off with this like dramatic PR statement about Duo dying. And I think that's what really like spurred it. We didn't realize the impact would be as great as it was. But when it did get to that point, we're like, all right, how do we keep leaning into what the community is saying and what the community wants us to do and like, iterate our content. So we had like five pieces of content we thought we were going to make. The five pieces that we ended up going live with were completely different. And we were able to do that because we have like an on site production assistant who helps like source props. We shot everything in office. All content creators were all hands on deck. Like there wasn't this like approval process outside of the social team. We know what our boundaries are, we know what we're not supposed to cross and we have the agency to go forward and push that. So we did that. There was no external agency involved because we didn't want so many levels of like approvals and back and forth and we need to get these assets up. So everyone, like myself, my direct report, Kelsey, who's also a content creator, and art director Fathi, all of us pretty much worked on creating this content throughout the week. We barely slept. It was wonderful. But it was also, like, such an exciting time. And we just try to think of, like, different components. So, yes, there's a social post, but then we did, like, a merch store component where you could actually buy a coffin for your duo plushie. And then we filmed that video. I wrote the script, Fatih filmed it, and then we posted it. And then the final thing was, like, this XP tracker that came from an engineer in Fathi, our art director of, like, how do we actually get people to, like, do their lesson and show that they can revive duo? So we'll have countries, like, compete against each other, and slowly, as they do their lesson, their XP will increase and they can see which country revive duo. So it kind of became this360 campaign within seven days because we had full agency to just keep pushing the envelope, to really go with our idea and commit to the bit and just keep. Yes. Anding. And so that kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier of, like, really fall following the tenets of improv. Like, we're constantly on our feet, constantly figuring out how to pivot and being absolutely okay with, like, scratching ideas and, like, having new ideas come up and executing on those.
- [18:23]
A
I think one thing you also I think is crazy to mention is that this campaign did 1.7 billion impressions, which is basically three Super bowl ads, which I think is crazy to think about. And as you could see, there's, like, not many. There's not an agency evolved. There's nothing. So, like, the budget was so low to put out something that was so well done, that got more viewed than, I would say, mo, like, 99% of content out there, which is crazy.
- [18:54]
B
Yeah, it was. It was wild. But I think, honestly, like I always say, fear. One of my actually mentors told me this. That fear is incredibly expensive. And it's something I always have in the back of my mind where a lot of this was hap happened and was allowed because there was agency in the social team to be our own approvers and to just go with an idea and run with it. And I think when brands have these. This fear, agencies have this fear, it just prevents the potential of getting that 1.7 billion impressions or getting that impact because we're so scared of what will happen or what won't happen. And I think we kind of lose sight of we should just try it and see what happens versus trying to anticipate the bad before it even happens campaigns get stuck.
- [19:38]
A
17 strategy drafts, feedback in multiple channels, approvals and email thread Limbo. Enter Loom, the AI powered video tool to get your team aligned and your campaign unstuck. Loom records your screen, camera and voice to share video messages Async so you can get the clarity to move forward. Fewer bottlenecks, faster launches, smarter campaigns. Go to loom.com that's l o o m dot com. I also want to go into something, I mean you talk about that you have a three to five post a week cadence. And what is your process of deciding what gets post through? Because I know you recently like just started like doing YouTube shorts really well. You've always done TikTok really well now IG. So what does that cadence look like so people could know like, okay, I need to post three to five posts a week. What does that look like?
- [20:41]
B
Yeah, so we really try to like balance our feed. If you're a Duolingo fan, you probably know when we first started it was like a lot of unhinged stuff. So now we're trying to work on this kind of on the strategy that we've coined as push and pull. So the push content is like push messaging. So content that you kind of expect, like learn a language. We've launched this new course, so on and so forth, using our animation and our design studio skills. And then pull is more of that viral punchy stuff. So we try to have about two posts of pull and two posts of push a week. And then sometimes pull tends to go a little bit higher just based off of like virality. But having that healthy balance kind of allows us to bring in this whole idea of candy to the medicine where like the candy is that pull content, that viral punchy stuff that's bringing you in. And then the medicine is that push. It's that here's how you can use this language. Here's a word in a language that you probably don't know. Here's a new course we launched and it allows us to have kind of this holistic, healthy brand where we understand trend, but we also understand that you need us to prove language efficacy and that we know how to teach a language. So that content is also there for you. We're just trying to bring you to our page and bring you to our app just so you can see that and bring you in a fun way.
- [21:58]
A
You really, I mean, duolingo social. Your whole team, you and your whole team are really good at finding out trends. So what are like, how are you so up to date on trends, what are you. What are you using to make sure that you hit those trends? Because I've seen what you multiple just one line posts. Trend jacking, something on Twitter, for example, like, makes you go viral. So what are some. How. How are you staying and when do you pick those moments to do those things?
- [22:28]
B
I think the truth of the matter is we're not using any tools, but we are all severely, chronically online. And the way that I've like hired my social team is like, yes, there's strategy there, but I would say majority of us are creators. Like, we are content creators. We know how to like, pick up a trend, how to make the video relevant, and how to go with this duolingo owl strategy and push it forward. And I think, I think honestly, it's going to be a challenge, right? Like when you don't. If you don't have an owl, how does that look like? If you don't have a character, what does that look like? So, yes, we're just online a lot and there's a lot of back and forth of like, should we use this trend? Should we not use this trend? Usually what allows us what we usually say yes to a trend. If, like, we kind of have this thing where it's like this Venn diagram where if we can mention the crop, the character, product and mission in some kind of way, that's usually like the golden trifecta for us, that does really well. So our mission is to make education accessible. We don't necessarily say that directly in our content, but if it can be about that in some sense of the word awesome character, usually that means like obviously duo, a world character in a trend and then the product. If there's a way, Sorry, excuse me. If there's a way for it to be about language learning, that's really going to elevate our kind of like our trend jacking above just being part of a trend, it's really about us being the right person to talk about that trend. So those are the moments you usually see that do really well. Or if it's a trend that no brand really wants to dive into, then we kind of dive into it. So, like, I think Adam Levine had these like insane text Messages or Instagram DMs a long time ago about a girl's body being insane and we actually put duo's body there instead. And I think the irony of it being like a fluffy cartoon bird made that okay for the world to process and they really loved it. But a lot of brands didn't jump there. So it's like finding spaces where there's loose balls and how do we chase those loose balls that people aren't paying attention to?
- [24:29]
A
Yeah. I think what you also said too is if you can fit the, at least most of the golden trifecta, and, and with that, Adam Levine having a, a character helped you, but at least, like, if you could fit in that golden trifecta, it works. If it doesn't, then you're probably gonna not jump on that campaign. Which is, which is cool that you said, like guardrails that, hey, if it fits into this, these guardrails, let's do it. If it doesn't, let's shy away from it.
- [25:06]
B
Yeah, for sure.
- [25:09]
A
I want to know, like, the lessons you've learned, like, what, what is different between posting on TikTok versus Instagram versus YouTube shorts? Like, what are some lessons you've learned that are like the same and what are different on all three of those channels?
- [25:26]
B
So TikTok for virality, very, very trend dependent. It's really hard to go viral with your own original content. So do with that as you will. YouTube opposite YouTube shorts, very not trend dependent, very original content, original skits, original lore. Building is actually what builds you up. So I think that is a great space for brands because that gives us more agency. Instagram is an enigma. I think now especially it's going to be used more for search. So how do you optimize to just get information about your brand out there? And then we'll repost some what we call millennial core, like reels. Like if we think like from TikTok, like, oh, this could probably relate to an elder audience. You don't just have to know what like Ohio is or what six, seven is. Like, you can, you can understand beyond that, then we'll post that. But I would say Instagram is mainly for information. YouTube is for our original content. And TikTok is for trends.
- [26:28]
A
I love for the millennials out there that we're chilling on Instagram. So you know that to post things with that, that's hilarious. Luckily, I'm on TikTok, so I know. And I'm chronically online and chronically on social too, so I understand these trends. But I understand that if you're posting like O or rising or things like that on like and millennials have no clue or haven't been in that world, it's not gonna hit as hard as it is on Tick Tock.
- [27:04]
B
And I think it also just depends on like, like, our brand was built for Gen Z on Tick Tock. But there's brands that were built for millennials on Tick Tock too. It's just a matter of, like, where your audience is as a brand. So, like, while this might be true for Duolingo, could be totally different for another brand.
- [27:20]
A
You've also mentioned that, like, third party impressions are a huge growth lever for Duolingo. So, like, for example, the, like, Charlie XCX activation, like, how do you spark ugc? That doesn't feel like a influencer placement. That actually feels like, organic.
- [27:43]
B
Yeah. I mean, again, it goes back to that golden trifecta. So we want to have. We know that people posting about us is far more impactful than us posting about ourselves. So we're always looking for, like, UGC moments of, like, where can we hit that golden trifecta? So Charlie XCX was a great example of that. So thinking about, like, character, product and mission. So our character duo, he's so distinctly distinctively green. And Brat green was like, that was the color of the summer. So we kind of had that going. Our product is language learning. And, like, she had a song called Talk Talk Talk that was literally went, talk to me in French, talk to me in Spanish, which is, like, kind of insane. And then Dua Lipa happened to be a feature on it. So that was happening there. And in the mission of making education accessible, we really wanted to show that, like, language learning can happen anywhere at any time. So with Charlie, we were like, okay, these are like the three things in our pocket. What if we show up with like, 20 Duolingo employees, put them in these Duolingo masks because we can't bring the suit in. And when she does the Apple, I think it was like the Apple song. Or if she does Talk Talk Talk, we'll put the masks on and then we'll just. We'll just see what happens. Like, the worst case we're losing the tick. The cost of the ticket to attend the Charlie concert. And the hope was that the bright green would be so bright that people would just start creating content about us, which they did. And then in the end, even Charlie from the stage went like, duolingo right there, baby. So, like, for her to just say that, it's because it was such an organic moment, it just made sense. It helped her brand, it helped our brand. There was no official partnership. We just showed up. And I think that is also, like, the beauty of it of, like, where your brand is willing to take risks and, like, figure out what risks they want to mitigate. And for us, our team decided that that organic moment of her calling us out and us getting UGC was worth any risk that would be kind of in there. And ultimately it worked out for the best for us.
- [29:45]
A
It was amazing. I mean, all these things you. You all think about. I mean, obviously you've said it. You have, like, a social first team. You have the improv mentality. You have guardrails of what should be going on social. And I think, like, understanding the world and, like, helps you. I mean, it could. It could have flopped, but, like, but you understood that. Brad Green, you understand that people. There are enough people out there that use duolingo to be able to, like, turn around and be like, oh, that's duo. Or I. I'm on social. So it's. It's cool. I want to also ask you one question. It's like, you've talked about how fast your team moves and, like, how good your team is at doing that in that improv mentality. But what, like, could you walk me through, like, what, like, the process of, like, what does it look like? Like, how do you script an idea versus how do you, like, once it's script, like, what's the next stage and then the next stage and then the final product.
- [30:51]
B
Yeah. I'll take you through our week. So every Tuesday, we run this thing called a content idea dump, where on Mondays, either myself or my director for Kelsey will release a theme of the week. So, like, maybe it's like, we're going to focus on the mission content and making education accessible. That's our goal this week. Just think about that. And then the content idea dump is actually this template that we have where it's like, what's the trend? If there's a trend, or, sorry, what's the idea? What's the trend? Add a link if there's, like, a trend to it. What's Duo's point of view and how strongly do you feel about this idea? And that last one is really important because a lot of the times when you're dumping and brainstorming, you're just kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall. But really knowing how strongly someone feels about an idea kind of gives you the conviction of them to follow through and create great work. So we have like a chili pepper scale where, like, if you're three chili peppers, you're really into it, it's really spicy, you're down for it. If it's one, you just kind of put it there just to fill the slide. So then on Tuesdays, we'll Go through that and we'll kind of match it to the theme and then we'll schedule it out throughout the week. So usually that Tuesday evening or afternoon or that Wednesday morning, we actually have professional dancers now. It used to be other dueling employees, but professional dancers will come in and then we'll film within. We have two hours of filming and they will actually film that content. And then the rest of Wednesdays usually spent editing that content. We're editing, adding captions to videos, adding captions in general, and then releasing it. So we've pretty much. We pretty much do not have an approval process anymore. The team understands what our limits are, what the boundaries are. They know what legal expects of them, they know what I expect of them, and they know what senior leadership expects of them. And they have the agency to post and move forward. Of course, there's been a couple moments where we've had to take stuff down, but like, we understand that moving at the speed of culture is more important than like having insane approvals for every single post. And if that means you have to take down a couple posts, that's okay because like 97% of them are usually fine and do well for the brand. So I think that's like the biggest difference is like, there's no robust approval process. The approvals lie within the team itself. That's creating the content.
- [33:05]
A
What is for people who want to get legal on your on their side? Because I know this is a huge problem with a lot of social marketers. Like, what did you do to make legal feel comfortable to the stage? Obviously you've got that 5% of content that gets taken down because of something happening. But how did you get legal on your side?
- [33:27]
B
I think what's hard is like with every legal risk you take, you're risking having to affecting your future. I guess of like, if I make this legal risk, like that probably means in maybe five months, if I get a call from like someone to take it down, I have to take it down. So I think there's this negotiation with our legal team where we understand that every risk we take is kind of playing on borrowed time. And their goal is to like pretty much allow us to do. Allow us to be as unhinged as possible in a way that's safe and legally safe. So I think having that agreement and understanding has allowed us to negotiate when we're posting something and when we're not posting something, our legal is not in charge of like, brand safety. Like they don't care, like they're not caring. Like oh, if like duo is positioned this way, then it comes off that their focus is more on like, is this, like, are we allowed to use this audio? Is this creator okay to use? How are we, are we making sure we're like displaying the right things? So that has also allowed us to create good swimming lanes where like they're not just giving like social creative feedback because they think something's legally risky for the brand. Like the brand mitigation and brand risk is actually put within the guidelines that we all agreed on and that had like contributions from social all the way to marketing leadership and to our C suite. So I think a lot of it is just really understanding where they're coming from and I think also aligning expectations. If legal is more strict, then you're probably just not going to be as viral of a brand. And like, if legal is more lenient, that you might have more potential to be viral, but you might have to scale things back at other times and be okay with pivoting. And so I think that's really important too is like you can't change your legal team, but you can align expectations. And like, as a social person, that's important to do, knowing what level of risk people are willing to take.
- [35:18]
A
Yeah, I think that's also a good point that there's legal who sits with like any ip, licensing issues, all that stuff. And then there's like brand where like that's like, are you affecting the brand? Like, are you going to get us canceled? Is this going to be deterrent to the brand? And then there's so like, there's two different parts of like getting canceled doesn't mean it's a legal issue. I mean it's usually a brand issue.
- [35:43]
B
And that gets muddled so quickly where like, and I think you should have third party mediators or people to help that. But like differentiating it has really allowed us to like move forward and streamline the process of getting things out.
- [35:55]
A
What's one social marketing belief that most brands still get wrong in 2025?
- [36:03]
B
That if you have to delete a post, it's the end of the world. I think it's totally okay to take down a post if it's not performing well, get the insights from it, see what was working, what wasn't working and go back to shop and create. I think the Internet is fleeting. It doesn't. People only see your post maybe one every 12 posts. Like that's just kind of how it works. Nobody's watching for every single post you post as a brand because people don't care about brands, so I would say that it's totally okay to delete a post.
- [36:32]
A
And lastly, what is a marketing hill?
- [36:35]
B
You would die on community matters. Everyone should have a community manager. Community literally runs these brands. And what differentiates like a brand that is successful, successful and that is thriving, has a robust community that is managed by people who care about them and cultivating that, maintaining that brand trust. So if you're hiring, hire a community.
- [37:00]
A
Manager and where could people find you, what you're doing, all that good stuff?
- [37:07]
B
LinkedIn mainly, which is kind of lame and boring. But I do have a LinkedIn newsletter where I yap about all of my feelings and vibes and things that I'm grappling with as a social person. I also have a TikTok that sometimes I don't attend to because I'm Busy on Duolingo's TikTok. But it's all Zarya Parva, so feel free to reach out any questions. Always here to lend an ear.
- [37:30]
A
Lend a hand everybody in the chat right now. Give Zaria a round of applause. She's amazing. She's the best. Go follow her. Please, please, please, please hype up the chat. Thank you so much Zaria for coming and this was amazing.
- [37:44]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [37:48]
A
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star review rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.