Duolingo

The Objective

Driving app installs

Duolingo, the world's most popular language learning platform and most downloaded educational app, knows that the biggest challenge for language learners is staying motivated. That's why its platform is gamified and has fun characters that motivate students to learn more and more. In the Brazilian scenario where speaking another language besides the native one is essential to achieve personal and professional goals, Duolingo offers a free app to everyone, according to its mission of reducing social inequality through education.

In August 2021, the back-to-school season in the country, Duolingo and the JotaCOM agency launched a campaign with the objective of increasing awareness and consideration for the brand, in addition to bringing new users to the app. They turned to TikTok to deliver an effective message to both a qualified and massive audience and, in this way, achieve their goals.

JotaCOM's main challenge in the Duolingo campaign was to increase the number of new users of the application—which already had more than 30 million in Brazil — through fun and dynamic communication, showing how learning with Duolingo is efficient and free.

The Solution

Teaching trending TikTok hashtags

The brand and the agency launched an app install campaign on TikTok with the message “Speaking English Doesn't Cost,” communicating that, with the Duolingo app, it is possible to learn a new language for free, fun and effectively anywhere.

In the creative assets, the brand's owl mascot and other characters teach the meaning of popular hashtags on TikTok, such as #fy, #trend, #stitch and #cringe, and invite the audience to "install now" the app. Using a vocabulary that is common among TikTok users was crucial for the brand to get attention and increase engagement.

Besides that, ensuring volume and high visibility were important factors for the campaign. And to solve this, Duolingo and JotaCOM built a strategy to broadcast four One Day Max daily ads, one per week for an entire month - so they could at the same time be massive, working with various creative lines and messages, and also sustain the campaign throughout the flight through In-feed Ads, which were delivered to targeted audiences throughout the entire campaign.

The Results

Surpassing KPIs with authenticity & creativity

With a diverse content production made specifically for TikTok, the audience receptivity and audience engagement rate surpassed the education market average: the campaign's average click-through rate was 39% above the benchmark, and Duolingo's follower base grew more than 1,400%.

This media orchestration reached over 38 million unique users on TikTok and aggregated over 90 million video views. On top of that, the campaign achieved its KPIs in terms of installs, cost per install, registrations, new users and retention, demonstrating a high qualification of the platform's audience.

It is clear that being authentic, fun and exploring the TikTok audience's repertoire in a creative way was a successful strategy and contributed significantly to more Brazilians starting to learn a language with a lot of motivation.

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