A few weeks before flying to Lisbon for vacation earlier this year, I redownloaded Duolingo. I’d used the language-learning app on and off for years to brush up on the French I’d learned in high school, but life and, frankly, a lack of discipline had prevented me from making the lessons a habit. This time, I wanted to learn enough Portuguese to avoid being labeled an “ugly American.” I promised myself that this time would be different, because now I had that magic ingredient that gets almost anything done: deadlines.
As the weeks leading up to my trip shrunk to days, I continued my Duolingo streak, collecting badges and taking encouragement from notifications from Duo, the brand’s green owl mascot. Then the plane came, and my streak ended.
It didn’t take long for the tone of Duolingo’s emails to change: “🥺It’s been 3 days…” one subject line read. “Are you bored of learning Portuguese yet?” the next day, “🤔It looks like you’ve learned how to say ‘quit’ in Portuguese.”
Without a second thought, I archived the unopened email. After all, I knew exactly what I’d signed up for: to learn Portuguese from the App Store’s biggest asshole.
The internet has almost a decade’s worth of posts, comments, and blogs lamenting Duolingo’s unfriendly attitude. One Reddit user half-jokingly described it as an attempt at emotional blackmail to encourage re-engagement. The nagging doesn’t end with email subject lines and push notifications. Inactive users might look at their phones and suddenly see the Duolingo app icon depicting a sad, old owl’s face — or one that blends into a carnivalesque nightmare. Parents have also complained that the wayward owl attacks their kids’ brains and makes them cry. It’s widely agreed that Duolingo is a real jerk, but some even go so far as to say the company’s manipulative messaging is completely unethical.
But for Duolingo, the relentless nagging seems to be a boon to its bottom line. The company ended the first quarter of 2024 reporting a 54% year-over-year increase in daily active users (to more than 31 million), a 45% increase in revenue, and record profitability. Not bad for an app whose influence has been described as “psychotic,” “erratic,” and “abusive.” The company instead seems to lean into those attributes. Those who hate Duolingo’s nagging may hate it, but the company’s under-30 demographic generally embraces it. Love it or hate it, the owl is charming.
It may be a stretch to say tough love is the secret to attracting Gen Z customers, but marketing experts say it’s part of the magic of marketing to Gen Z.
“Younger generations in marketing want companies that have a special, unique personality that’s memorable and feels authentic,” says Philadelphia-based marketing consultant Brian Honigman. While older adults may respond to corporatized brand messaging like succinct, assertive slogans like “I’m lovin’ it” or “Just do it,” younger adults and teens tend to seek out brands that embody distinctive values ​​and interests and appear to have a clear outlook on the world, according to Honigman.
“They’re looking for something that feels more human,” Honigman said. “Duolingo is doing a great job of being different than a lot of other brands.”
What marketers call “authenticity” might be more accurately described as “consistency across platforms.” Whatever the product, marketers tend to agree that a brand’s current and potential customers notice a distinctive personality emerge. Whether people like Duolingo’s sassy spokesman owl or not, they’re likely to appreciate the character’s commitment to its obnoxious persona outside of the app and user notifications. Through the occasional TV ad and regular streams on platforms like YouTube, X, and especially TikTok (where Duolingo boasts more than 12.5 million followers), the self-satisfied little bird is uncannily self-aware.
The same influencers who Duolingo and Geico reward for drawing an owl or a gecko correctly will criticize brands who draw the wrong ones.
A recent TikTok post by the company, captioned “Celebrating the return of your blue check,” shows the duo twerking in purple thongs while being pelted with red roses. A few days earlier, when pop singer and party girl quintessential Charli XCX announced that she would be releasing a new album, Brat, on X, the Duolingo account reshared the post, adding, “I can’t believe you wrote a whole album for me.”
Duolingo’s brand presence is also irreverent and funny enough to be memed. During this year’s Super Bowl, the company made headlines with a five-second ad in which its owl mascot pooped out a miniature of its own face with the caption “Let’s do some Duolingo.” The company made sure that US users received a push notification the moment the commercial aired, which read, “But don’t say a word, do a lesson right now.”
While the app’s re-engagement notifications have trended toward more bluntness, a Duolingo spokesperson said the company started leaning into the owl’s sassy online persona a few years after the “evil Duolingo owl” meme went viral on Tumblr in 2017. “Since then, we’ve run a number of social-first marketing campaigns incorporating the meme,” the spokesperson said. In 2021, the company released a public service announcement-style YouTube short called “Notices You Can’t Ignore.” It followed that up with “Lawyer Fights Duolingo Owl for $2.7 Million,” a parody of a personal injury lawyer’s TV ad, in 2023.
“People love brands with personality,” Matt Williams, visiting clinical marketing professor at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary, told me. “Too many brands are afraid to step out and achieve personality, but the brands that do it well reap the rewards.”
Williams understands this better than anyone. From 2013 to 2018, he was CEO of the Martin Agency, the company that came up with the cockney-accented gecko to promote the insurance company Geico, revolutionizing how the company was marketed. “As CEO of the agency that created the Geico gecko, I can’t tell you how many times my chief marketing officer said to me, ‘Can you do for us what you did for Geico?'” he says. “But the downside risk could be just as big: influencers who reward Duolingo or Geico for getting it right with the owl or the gecko will tarnish the brand for getting it wrong.” When M&M’s changed its green-and-brown “spokescandy” from a cheeky character in high heels to one in sneakers and low heels in 2022, critics across the internet rallied. Conservative critics called it woke. One TikTok user in his 20s called it an unnecessary crime called “de-Yasashiiization.”
Williams sees Duolingo’s cheeky owl as a case study in getting brand personality right, which has been a big hit with younger language learners, especially Gen Z and millennials: About 60% of the app’s U.S. language learners are under 30, the company said in a 2022 blog post.
Duolingo’s liveliness isn’t just a marketing ploy; it also drives user engagement. Kristen Smirnoff, an associate professor of marketing at Whittier College, said brands are capitalizing on users’ desire to avoid friction to keep them engaged. That’s part of the secret to getting people hooked on free gaming apps like “Candy Crush,” which make money from selling in-game add-ons and boosters.
“What our designers do carefully is calculate exactly how many moves it takes to beat a given level regularly,” Smirnoff says, “and then offer the player a few fewer moves.” Once a player is very close to beating a level, they’re willing to pay more to increase the number of moves it takes to win.
Duolingo similarly gamifies friction, not by rigging challenges but by using a trusty sidekick to annoy users. “They had to ask themselves, ‘Okay, how do we create the friction that consumers want to avoid?'” Smirnoff says. “So they created that deeply annoying logo, the owl.”
After all, they are making you feel bad for not finishing your Spanish lesson.
Even in gamified situations, emotional friction like Duolingo’s nagging solicitations can backfire if applied over a long period of time. Research shows that it’s especially dangerous to develop marketing campaigns that make people feel bad about themselves. A 2010 study found that using guilt and shame in anti-alcohol ads triggered defensive reactions and made target audiences more likely to actually drink more. When people feel like they’re constantly being hit with reminders of their failure, they may decide it’s no longer fun and move on. “People may stop treating it as a habit and never open the app again,” Smirnoff said, recalling his own experience of becoming inundated with notifications and becoming disillusioned with Duolingo after his 52-day stint studying German was interrupted by illness.
Despite the research, Duolingo maintains that guilt-tripping notifications are effective at enticing people to drop whatever they’re doing and log into the app. A spokesperson told Debugger in 2020 that “other options” for re-engaging users were “5% to 8% less effective at persuading learners to take a lesson.”
Still, not everyone is a fan: When Duolingo’s head of product, Sem Kansoo, posted a thread about the success of “passive-aggressive reminders” in 2020, several disgruntled Duolingo users chimed in. “Wow, you’re trying to motivate people to learn through shame and guilt? That’s pretty gross,” one reply read.
But in the grand scheme of things, how bad is marketing really? Caring about a product or service means submitting to a company’s shameless appeals to get you to come back for more. It’s a dynamic woven into the unspoken contract consumers tacitly sign when they pay a mattress company that promises the best sleep of their life, or buy a pair of jeans that will effortlessly flatter your French feminine figure. Marketing works by appealing to people’s deepest hopes and fears, offering consumer goods as a direct gateway to the consumer’s ideal future.
Manipulative? Sure. Unethical? Not necessarily.
Mara Einstein, a marketing professor at Queens College and author of the upcoming book “Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults,” told me that ethical lines are crossed when brands use false premises to lure or trap consumers. She cited pyramid schemes as one business model that routinely uses these unethical tactics to acquire new customers: They bombard customers with communications, then delay delivery of promised goods or services until they pay more time, money, or both.
“That doesn’t happen with Duolingo,” Einstein says. “They might nudge you, but you can always say, ‘You know what, this isn’t for me.'” Users can opt out at any time. (I never went back to my Portuguese lessons.)
“At the end of the day, they’re making you feel bad for not finishing your Spanish lessons,” says Honigman, the Philadelphia marketing consultant. “At the end of the day, it’s not going to hurt the world.”
Kelly Maria Korducchi is a journalist focusing on work, technology and culture. She is based in New York City.
