Duolingo shares PR secrets of viral ‘Death of Duo’ campaign

Duolingo users who opened their app on Feb. 11 found the familiar green owl mascot dead – tongue out, eyes replaced with cartoonish Xs.

It wasn’t a simple logo tweak. It marked the start of one of the most bizarre and viral campaigns in the language app’s 14-year history.

Most recognized the drama as a clever marketing stunt – the latest calculated move by Duolingo to dominate internet culture.

What the public didn’t see was the frantic, behind-the-scenes work by Duolingo’s media relations team, who had just three business days to build and launch an outreach plan. They dropped everything, even other global campaigns, like a partnership with McDonald’s Brazil, to make the moment work.

Monica Earle, Duolingo’s director of PR, credits the campaign’s success to crisis comms training and strong collaboration, which helped them pull off their biggest earned media moment yet, even surpassing the buzz around their 2021 IPO.

“Working for a brand that goes as viral as Duolingo often feels like running comms through a crisis,” said Earle. “It’s less stressful than a real, legitimate crisis, obviously, but you still have to be ready to adapt quickly.”

Move fast and break stuff (with a Cybertruck)

The idea emerged from growing alignment between Duolingo’s product and marketing teams.

“We don’t want to sell the product on social media through traditional marketing,” said Earle, who joined the company in 2021. “We’re finding more natural ways to bring the app and social presence closer together.”

That included syncing app icon changes with marketing campaigns. Seasonal tweaks, like a sickly Duo during flu season, had worked before.

This time, CEO and co-founder Luis von Ahn pushed for something more extreme: “Make it fun. Make it weird.” After a few iterations, he pushed again: “Make it weirder.”

That’s when the now-iconic image of a lifeless Duo was born.

By Thursday, a brainstorm led to a whodunnit concept. By Friday, the team produced a deck of ideas. By Tuesday, a black memorial-style card went live on social media.

“There wasn’t a lot of time for strategic PR planning,” Earle said. The media was looped in late, unusual for major campaigns, and had to quickly pen a eulogy-style statement for a TikTok, complete with Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” playing over it.

@duolingo UPDATE: Reward for whoever can identify the driver. Please post any leads on TikTok. Thank you for your patience with us during these trying times. #RIPduo ♬ original sound – Duolingo

The post exploded: 144 million views on X, 558,000 likes and 20,000 comments on TikTok. Dua Lipa, a frequent collaborator with Duolingo who was mentioned in the post, reshared the message organically, which generated another 22 million views.

For the outside world, the statement aimed to keep people curious about what happened to Duo. Behind the scenes, though, the team hadn’t yet decided how he died.  Instead, they crowdsourced theories: Was it Drake? MrBeast?

Ultimately, they landed on Duo being hit by a Cybertruck, “because it’s just so ridiculous,” Earle said, but they kept the driver a mystery to keep the joke going.

Throughout, the team stuck to a key philosophy: “The comments are your next (media) brief,” said Earle.

Dealing with the media

Working with agency partner Edelman, the team segmented outreach into entertainment, marketing and consumer news, prioritizing the top 20 broadcast stations to expand beyond digital reach.

“I think everybody Gen Z and younger Millennials are kind of tuned into the internet,” she said. “Older generations are still reading legacy media, watching local broadcast news, so we wanted to make sure we brought this story there as well.”

But much of the work took on a reactionary tone. Once Duo’s “death” went public, media inquiries poured in: “Wait, is this real?”

The story broke into local news and pop culture fixtures like “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.”  News outlets around the world published 450 articles about Duo’s death, and 60% of those came from what Duolingo defines as “top-tier” publications. Earle defined “top-tier” as a highly ranked, reputable outlet that gave Duo a full feature, not just a mention.

Because the campaign evolved rapidly, the team kept things vague in their messaging. They drafted an official statement: “We can confirm the statements in our recent social posts are true. It is with great sorrow that we announce the passing of our beloved mascot, Duo the Owl. For years, he tirelessly reminded millions to do their language lessons—sometimes with gentle nudges, sometimes with sheer, unhinged persistence. But even the most relentless of birds can only take so much. Our app icon reflects this tragic loss with ‘Dead Duo.'”

When asked if it was a rebrand, Duolingo’s standard response was: “I can confirm this is not a rebrand and is part of a brand marketing moment.”

“We knew it wasn’t a rebrand, but we were getting a ton of press inquiries,” Earle said. “I wrote a statement that confirmed, yes, he’s dead, but also left the door open.”

The team also prepared an FAQ section on its website to maintain the playful narrative, especially for children who asked questions.
To the key question – “Will Duo come back?” – Earle cleverly responded, “Legends never truly die,” hinting at a future resurrection without giving details away that could spoil the fun.

Managing risk in real time

Despite the buzz, Earle worked carefully to manage global sensitivities. In Japan, for example, Duo never “died,” he was simply “dead tired.”

Earle described working with local offices to navigate cultural nuances as critical.

Internally, the team debated responses too. One of the biggest tweets was a cheeky reply to X’s tribute: “Both killed by a Cybertruck,” referencing both Duo and X’s former blue bird logo.

Before posting, Earle consulted legal. Since X had posted and tagged Duolingo, legal gave the green light. But Earle also flagged the risk to customer support, which handles service inquiries through X.

“I was nervous,” Earle admitted. “I said, ‘Let’s just make sure our customer support team is aware, because this could backfire.’”

Turning buzz into lasting engagement

The Duolingo engineering team quickly created a “Bring Back Duo” landing page, inviting users to collectively earn 50 billion XP through language practice to resurrect Duo.

It all tied back to Duolingo’s philosophy: “Learning is hard, so make it fun — and make it weird,” as von Ahn often says.

Earle that Duolingo doesn’t create “buzz for the sake of buzz.” It all has to drive tangible business results.

The PR team tracked article volume, assigned values to media placements and compared results to benchmarks from past milestones. Local TV news stations covered Duo’s revival in 13 segments including major DMAs such as Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. NPR published a written feature, following initial coverage of Duo’s passing which aired on the radio across national affiliates.

But Earle emphasized that PR’s real role isn’t just headlines, it’s driving app engagements. Duolingo’s re-engagement and product marketing teams work together on a full strategy to win back lapsed users, using push notifications, email marketing and viral social campaigns like this one.

“We look at that lift and then ask, is it just a spike, or is it a spike that sustains?” said Earle.

The campaign produced a lift in both new and returning users. Critically, Duolingo’s internal analytics team tracked not just spikes but whether it sustained engagement.

Duolingo will share those details than its next earnings report on May 1.

“I really don’t know how we’ll top this one,” Earle joked. “I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see.”

Casey Weldon is a reporter for PR Daily. Follow him on LinkedIn.