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Speaking Of Growth, With Duolingo’s CMO


For many brands, performance marketing can become a crutch, he warns Manu Orssaud, CMO of language app Duolingoon this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.

Direct response is easy to measure, which makes it very attractive. But the more advertisers invest in DR, the more they invest in DR, often at the expense of their brand marketing efforts.

“There’s a trap that a lot of our competitors and other brands have fallen into, which is using performance as a lever to scale very quickly before they’ve got a good product-market fit,” says Orssaud.

In order to attract funding, app-based businesses are under enormous pressure to show rapid user growth. Ultimately, they will “hook into” measurability, he says.

And once performance marketing becomes a major driver of growth, “it’s really hard to get rid of it,” says Orssaud. Duolingo limits the number of users it acquires through paid media channels.

“We believe this is the right way to grow,” says Orssaud. “We have a very strong product and a very strong brand.”

But a strong brand doesn’t happen by accident or chance. Duolingo spends a lot of time and money on brand marketing, and it pays off. Even people who don’t use the app probably know its cute, unhinged mascot, the multilingual green owl Duo.

Duolingo has built a strong community around Duo, which (half-jokingly) threatens users on social media when they post that they haven’t finished their lessons, and also stars in hilariously demented TikTok videos like this one in which Duo sings a gibberish version of “Cotton Eye Joe.”

“We want to continue to make content that’s fun, entertaining and gives people three seconds of something special that’s memorable,” says Orssaud. “[That’s] what marketing should be trying to do.”

Also in this episode: Inside Duolingo’s love for “brain rot” content, using “stripes” to increase retention, that Farting Duo Super Bowl ad from last year (just watch it!), measuring word of mouth marketing and learning Japanese.





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