The Daily Carnage - Tales from TDC: Duolingo

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The one with the owl and the creative team that put him on the toilet.

The Challenge

You need to produce results faster than your marketing team (is one person even a team?) can keep up with.

What Duolingo Did

Duolingo’s newly hired CMO, Cammie Dunnaway, was tasked with adding marketing to the brand’s already hugely successful mix of word-of-mouth and PR.

New hires were coming, but not fast enough.

“I knew that I had to deliver a huge New Year’s program,” Dunnaway said, “I had not hired anyone yet...so, I went to Carney and they helped me to build a great New Year’s program that helped me build credibility internally and that really delivered on results.”

How Carney Helped

New Year’s resolution season is a time for Duolingo to capitalize on increased interest in language learning.

The hashtag #duomore was at the heart of the concept convincing people to Scroll Less and Learn More.

The Results

The campaign was a huge success garnering over 500,000 new installs! The New Year's Campaign achieved app installs for a cost 73% lower than the average app CPI worldwide. The findings were used to inform future seasonal and evergreen paid media efforts.

Bringing Duo to Life

Duo is the brand’s enthusiastic (if slightly antagonistic) spokesbird and language coach. Carney storyboarded and animated short videos and digital ads that captured attention and brought Duo to life.

With a huge linguistic and cultural sandbox to play in - from K-POP to GOT - Carney helped Duolingo design and launch creative concepts throughout the year.