Our Reel
EN
From opening a museum of wonky translations to twerking to the beat of the latest TikTok trend, our work for Duolingo is always pushing us to come up with new, culturally relevant ways to get people to do their damn lessons. And when all else fails, we've got Duo, the brand's unhinged owl mascot, ready to fly in and save the day.
- PROJECT -
In our first campaign for Duolingo, the world's #1 language app, we decided to give language-learning mistakes a reputation makeover. Instead of feeling self-conscious about Japan's unorthodox usage of English in public signs, menus, and advertising, we saw beyond the obvious and found profound, poetic beauty. Thus the Museum of Wonky English was born: the first institution in the country to shed light on the art of mistranslation. What started as a local brand activation made worldwide headlines and gave people another reason to visit Tokyo. How did we do it? With precision and elegance.
- PROJECT -
Duolingo knows consistency is key when learning a language. But keeping a streak during the holiday season, with dinners, parties, and dates becomes almost an insurmountable task, even for the most disciplined. In our time of need, we decided to turn to Duo, Duolingo's owl mascot, who's known to go to insane extremes to get people to do their lessons. We asked of him to commit the ultimate sacrifice: be chopped into pieces, deep-fried, and given away in buckets to anyone who did their lesson on Christmas Eve. Why? Because in Japan, a KFC bucket is the go-to Christmas meal, (and because we are a bit macabre). People came in droves to Shibuya Hikarie (where we held the event) and we were out of buckets in just a few minutes.
- PROJECT -
Launching and managing Duolingo's Japanese TikTok account has felt more like a science class than advertising: full of experimenting, trial and error, testing hypotheses, arriving at conclusions, and even burning our fingers with Bunsen burners... This is not only because the bar was set extremely high by what the brand has achieved on their US account, but also because what works elsewhere might not necessarily do the trick in Japan.
Suffice it to say that, in our search for the right tone, we've tried everything from sulking because Sonic didn't invite us to his birthday party, to playing Project Sekai with Duo's beak, and turning his wings into gigantic gyozas. So, knowing that only four months in we are one of the top accounts in the country feels doubly great.
