Duo's Demise: Duolingo's Viral Rebranding Stunt

0:00Well, it's kind of interesting to me because he's been around for quite a bit and has had a giant personality. And, you know, like I said, they changed the app screen based on kind of where you're at, which is kind of where you are in your journey and when he's doing different things and stuff like that. And I thought it was interesting that they did it with a Tesla Cybertruck because I thought that was clearly trying to engage Elon Musk.

0:30Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Business Lunch with your hosts, Ryan Dice and me, Roland Frazier. Ryan, how are you doing today? Dude, I'm really, really good because next week I'm headed down to Mexico. One of our favorite places, Punta Mita. You're not going to be there, sadly, but hanging out with our Founders Board Mastermind members. So excited to be there. But right now I'm in that kind of do two weeks worth of work in one week so that you can actually enjoy your vacation. So I'm excited, but I'm I'm also like incredibly stressed out by the volume of work and what the mode that I'm in right now is I'm in the, I don't want to do any of this.

1:07So I'm procrastinating. That's awesome. Yeah. So you have, but you're getting nothing done. And it's terrible because I'm self-aware, you know, like I know that what I'm doing is terrible. Like I had a friend this morning, like, Hey, can we get, can we get together? I'd love to. I was like, yeah, absolutely. I got nothing to do. That's not true. I got tons to do gobs. I just don't want to do it. so i'm in the right now i'm in the procrastination phase that's going to give way to the oh my god i'm totally screwed and i have to you know get all this done and that's when i'm at like peak productivity superhuman level productivity but you will you will get it done i know it has it it has always has a way to get it done what about you what you up to uh i am uh having uh having fun uh our producer my son ryan and i have been uh playing with one of our friends around with the idea of starting music channel.

2:00And so we're playing with that as I'm coming to the end of a little bit over a year long redo of my music studio at the house and everything. So that's kind of fun. I've been, can you reveal yet the, the channel name or anything? Synth Cave. I think it's the Synth Cave, but I, I, I can't ever find it on YouTube. Ryan has, my son's name, Ryan, has got it, but it doesn't show up on my account. It's a good sign. So it's really hard to get to. So it's not getting the attention that it would get otherwise. Yeah. But yeah, that's cool. And recovering from a pickleball injury, which is annoying. I don't like sports injury type things.

2:41That's not fun. I thought the whole point of pickleball is you're not allowed to get injured. That's why old people play it and stuff. Yeah, but you're, I mean, it can be like, watch the tournaments. It can be as athletic as you want it to be. So it's definitely, if you're playing at a higher level, it definitely gets injurable. So what did you injure? I pulled a calf muscle going, you know, going for a ball that was low, that was, that came down in the opposite direction that I thought it was going to come. So I had to make a quick change. And, uh, so anyway, that's enough of, enough of that stuff.

3:21The other day I sneezed really hard and pulled my back. So, um, you did what the other day I sneezed really hard and, uh, and, and pulled a muscle on my back. So that's, that's how old I am on that age now. That's great. I like it. So, um, we had a couple of things that we talked about talking about today. one of the ones that is fairly timely is that the very very big personality green owl named duo that is the mascot of duolingo has sadly been killed off by duolingo apparently the story is that Duo, which is his name, was fatally struck by a Tesla cyber truck. And it's kind of interesting because he had, like the picture of him on Duolingo, if any of you guys have the app, changes, like if you don't.

4:20Right now he's got X's in his eyes, like he's been in a tongue that's like, like he's been. Ryan, do we have a picture of dead Duo? Can we pull that up on the screen while you're describing it, Roland? keep going yeah and um he's he's on my app i don't know if you can see this is gonna focus yeah see the x is oh yeah yeah he doesn't look so good yeah um interestingly enough just a few days ago he was uh he was mad at me because i hadn't uh i hadn't continued my streak and so it was like a broken glass like shattered glass all over him and uh a fade it's it's like very very funny yeah like so can dead can dead duo be mad at you no i said a few days ago when he was alive he was just killed i think maybe even this morning or yesterday yeah well i heard he was killed my my youngest son timmy he you know he he did duolingo i think he had like a streak a 500 day streak which for like an 11 12 year old was pretty solid in german um and uh and he came and told me he's like they killed duo i was like i'm so sorry i don't know who we're talking about right now.

5:23I was, I was happy to hear that it was an animated, uh, uh, you know, like foreign language learning, um, logo app, um, so anyway, so, um, yeah. So, so what's the plan here? They're, they're just killing off, uh, well, it's, that's kind of interesting to me. Um, cause, cause he's been around for quite a bit and, and has had a giant personality. And, you know, like I said, they changed the, uh, the app screen based on kind of where you're at, which is kind of where you are in your journey and when he's doing different things and stuff like that. And, um, I thought it was interesting that they did it with a Tesla cyber truck, because I thought that was clearly trying to engage Elon Musk and, uh, and Tesla, which is very smart.

6:05Um, they had already kind of reeled in cause he talks about Dua Lipa being his counterpart. And so Dua Lipa posted an Instagram, uh, post about his demise and several other brands. Surely that was a paid promotion, right? Who knows? Surely she's in on it. Who knows? And so several other brands also have done the same thing. So I think they're smart because they're engaging with somebody with a, you know, a brand that has a giant following and is amazing at marketing and vice versa. And so I just thought it was pretty cool. And so I thought it'd be interesting to talk about it because the whole idea of a brand change is something that people think about from time to time.

6:48And we have certainly, um, I know we had a mastermind called war room that we talked about, well, that's kind of masculine and it's like talks about fighting. And when we would get people to do logos for it, I remember one of the animated logos was people with pitchforks and like knives and skides and like fire in the background. And we're like, no, this is not like apocalypse mastermind. This is, you know, it's like a strategy room, like, you know, Churchill back in World War II. And they're like, well, we weren't alive then. We don't even have any idea what that was. So we had talked then about rebranding it.

7:22And it's a big decision because you have brand recognition and everything. And I don't think they're going to change the name of the company, but a mascot that's been around for a long time is kind of interesting. And so they've got a mixed bag of, uh, responses to it. The thing is, is that, uh, they could bring him back, but that would cost them some credibility if they ever tried to do it again. And I think some, some loss of trust. Um, but also there are people that are like, you know, you can't kill two. Oh, he's our guy. Right. So it's kind of interesting. And, um, so the things that I thought was it, it is a story also.

8:03So rather than just announce we're, you know, we're not classic Coke anymore. We're new Coke, you know, we're the 12 iterations of Pepsi logo or whatever, you know, here's, here's our new logo. Here's our new brand. They told a story. They said, you know, yeah, duo was out, you know, and his cruised around got hit by a cyber truck, you know, uh, and, and fatally, fatally hit by a cyber truck. And that creates an actual story. And so I thought that they've done such a good job of telling stories with this mascot for all this time that it was kind of cool and appropriate that they would tell a story here.

8:39And they've done a great job of like really, really creating a dialogue around it so that it's it's it's it's not just something that that they announce. It's actually telling a story and the announcement comes as a byproduct of the story as opposed to just being a boring announcement. And they talk about funny, you know, it's like they bring in storytelling humor. They are responding by not committing specifically to what's going to happen in the future. And they are asking their audience to suggest what they think happened or what they think is going to happen. And then they're using that to measure popularity of different potential concepts.

9:33crowdsource ideas as to how they're going to redirect the narrative going forward. And, um, and then they'll pick the one probably that resonates with the most people that they want it to resonate with, which I think is brilliant. And, um, and then they are also doing this, like they want people that like Tesla and and Cybertrucks and things like that. So like they're telling a story to people who aspire to the things that are in the story. So the nice thing about that is it works both for people who like Tesla and Cybertrucks and people who don't. Yes. Because if you like Tesla and Cybertrucks, you're like, ha ha, yeah, like I love that.

10:17And if you hate them, you're like, just like those bastard Cybertruck owners, they're running over like sweet, adorable things. So yeah, it's kind of, you win either way. You either love it or you hate it. Yeah. So I just thought it'd be kind of cool to, to, uh, to say like lots of good lessons, I think from that, you know, in, in the things that I mentioned and probably some more that you got. And then, you know, let's talk about if you are thinking about doing a brand change, um, is it, is like, does it have to be that you're changing the name of the company or can it just be that you're changing a spokesperson, uh, because this is effectively a spokesperson or a mascot, does it make sense to have a mascot?

10:58Are there benefits to having an animated cartoon mascot? Because you can have, you know, it's basically never going to ask for a raise because it basically doesn't have any ability to do that, at least not yet until AI exceeds our intelligence, I suppose. But just a lot of interesting things here to think about, right? That, that the split of like having a person who's representing your brand who might go out and get into trouble or do something like a Jared, I think it was for subway, right? Like all of your marketing and everything that you've built and put millions or hundreds of millions of dollars into a brand can go away in the blink of an eye.

11:38If somebody does something stupid or gets canceled or does something illegal. And also you're building brand equity in another person, even though they're speaking to your brand, if you're elevating them and pouring exposure dollars into getting them well-known, it's very likely that at some point with a successful campaign, they're going to come back and say, hey, you need to give me more money. So that's the having a persons that's a spokesperson having a creature that's fictitious, that's drawn as a spokesperson like the Aflac duck or, uh, you know, or duo or the Chihuahua in, um, uh, Taco Bell ads for several years, right?

12:23Those, those all really give you much more flexibility and the downside, uh, and, and help you reduce the downside of bad things happening. Um, so I'd love to talk about, should we think about having a spokesperson? Should we think about having an animated or fictitious creature kind of thing? What are the goods and bads? And if we're going to make a brand change, should we lean all the way in and say, we're not, you know, we're no longer Virgin Airlines. We are part of Alaska because we got bought or, you know, like it's just to me, it seems like there's a lot of interesting things. So that's my not completely well thought out explosion of thought.

13:09Yeah. Let's, I mean, I think it's worth taking kind of one at a time. So the, the, the idea of specifically this campaign, like the duo is dead campaign, if it is indeed an actual rebrand, I think it's pretty brilliant because I think most rebrands are astoundingly stupid. They're self-congratulatory. It's the, the, the business talking about all these reasons, like self-aggrandized reasons, pulling a muscle to pat themselves on the back reasons for why they're changing their logo. And exactly nobody freaking cares. Okay. Nobody cares. Clearly some creative agency sold some CMO who sold some CEO and their own freaking ego for a whole lot of money.

13:50Okay. That is what the vast majority of rebrands are. I mean, I cannot remember the whole time you're talking about this. I've been trying to think of a single company rebrand that as a direct result of that rebrand, the logo change, or even a name change, people all of a sudden were like, oh, heck yeah, I'm all in on that one now. Like, I think it's far more likely everybody's like, well, that's stupid. Why did they spend all that money? Like, I mean, you talk about the Pepsi. Like, seriously, everybody should go and Google Pepsi logo and its changes over the years. I mean, it's like the most ridiculous, absurd little changes.

14:22I think Walmart just updated its logo. And if you squint even a little bit, it looks exactly the same. Well, you get brands that have, and it might be because nobody generally likes change. And so when you see a brand change, I'll look at a fashion brand. So Yves Saint Laurent is a relatively big fashion brand and they were YSL for years. They went from Yves Saint Laurent to YSL. And then they just changed to Saint Laurent. And we were all kind of like, why? Why? Everybody had decided you. And so that's, I think that's, so going back to that, I think that's such a great point. So I think in general, it is a foolish, foolish, foolish move to invest money in updating your brand.

15:11And we've done this like a digital marketer, I think two or three times. It's like, I got sick of like the gears and I'm like, they're basically Christmas colors. This is stupid. We should go and update it. And invariably, we never came up with anything better. I'm like, nobody cares. This is not going to make us any new money. Let's leave it the same. Like, why are we messing with this? It just doesn't matter. So if, however, you make the decision that you're going to do it, I guess at least have some fun with it, with what they're doing, gather some additional attention around it, make it at least somewhat timely, relevant, and entertaining to what people are talking about.

15:45So I'll give them that if it's a brand change. I think there's a pretty good chance that this is all just kind of a PR stunt. There are no real changes happening whatsoever. And Duo is going to be back. I mean, this is like when soap operas would kill off the main character and it turns out it was just a dream, right? I mean, this has the makings of that to me. And maybe I'm wrong. But if they're doing it as an aspect of a brand change, I still think brand changes are largely stupid, largely a waste of money, largely a waste of marketing space. But if you're going to do it, at least this seems like one of the most inventive and creative ways that I've seen.

16:21So I'll buy that. But what you said about Yves Saint Laurent, I think is so important. When a brand change does make sense is when your customers are pulling you in that direction. So I'll give an example of what I said before. I couldn't come up with an example for. So I said before, I can't come up with an example of a brand change that actually made sense. Well, here's one that I just thought of. KFC. So growing up, it was Kentucky Fried Chicken. Right. Right. And you had Colonel Sanders on a box of chicken. It was very kind of old school looking. What did all the customers call it, though?

16:54Yeah. We all called it KFC. Right. And so they rebranded to lean into what their customers were calling them. To me, that makes sense. Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, you're calling us this? Same going back to our event, traffic and conversion side. Everybody was calling it T &C. So we changed the logo to T &C. I mean, yeah, it was a lot shorter, more iconic, more brandable, but it also was what people were calling it. Now, as soon as we sold that brand, as soon as we sold that company, what's the first thing that the new owners do? They changed the logo to something that they felt like would be more fancy and new that nobody freaking recognized.

17:37They changed it to T.C, as I recall. Yeah, it was T and C with a dot over it. And spent tens of thousands of dollars to get it done. So I think brand changes if they align with where the market is headed and what people are calling you. I'll buy that. If you're not being pulled in that direction, though, this is just marketing masturbation. Yeah. Well, now here in their case, I'm wondering because they basically are engaging everybody on social media. Like it's kind of a free earned media extravaganza, right? So for them, like the other side of it. So I liked the, the audience pulls you there, I think is a great, and KFC is a fantastic example, uh, as, as honestly as TNC.

18:25Um, and I think that the YSL, and there's probably 10 more like that, that I commented that's like, why, you know, but, uh, and, and they'll do stupid things. Huh? We just hate money. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's just crazy. But, um, but, but, but the other reason would be to create controversy. Like if you've got people that love this, this owl and you've got people that hate it, because a lot of people hate it because he's also quite manipulative. Then like it's, it's a good lean to get a big boost in, in just earned media presence out there or share, is it share a voice? Because, because it's going to, everybody's going to talk about it.

19:10Right. So I think they get way more mileage out of this than spending$50 million on a marketing campaign or whatever is it,$11 million a minute now on a Super Bowl ad. This is just like, you know, catches like wildfire, right? So if you're trying to do that, creating a huge controversy could be cool. And maybe they're going to come out and say, you know, like you said, like a soap opera thing. It's like, no, actually, it turns out it was Duo's twin or Duo is concerned about people. You know, we knew that he had something out for him. So we had doppelduos that were, you know, his doppelganger that did it.

19:49You know, it's like it turns out he's been flat all along because he's an app, you know, Mr. Peanut, Mr. Peanut. They killed planners, killed Mr. Peanut. but then like they killed mr peanut then had the tears of the kool-aid character cry a rebirth of baby peanut and that's going to grow i guess into the new mr peanut maybe it with a more modern feel instead of the spectacle and the top hat and the whatever you call those things that spats he's gonna you know he's gonna be like cool hip that's like that's the stupidest thing i've ever heard in my entire life. Mr. Peanut needs the freaking spectacles in the top hat or he's not Mr.

20:27Peanut. So the tears of Kool-Aid, yeah, I'll buy you that. That's kind of clever. But he should be reborn into exactly what he was before. Jack in the Box did this. They literally blew up, you know, Jack and then revived him like a decade or so later. Right. And now Jack is the is that thing. So, look, you know, I think I think probably pivoting to talking about spokespeople and fictitious spokespeople, now's a good time to do that. But just kind of - To summarize what we said, so kind of, and you can say agree or disagree, but I think two reasons. One, the market has pulled you there anyway, so lean into the new and it makes you modern and it makes sense.

21:07Two, if you want to create a giant amount of earned media and you've got the audience to do that, Or particularly if you have a polarized audience of liking and not liking, then it can be good to do it, even if you do let them go at that point. And just like, who's the successor? Because, I mean, at some point, it's been too long, right? Yeah, if you're going to make a change anyway, and sometimes it is appropriate to make a change for a mascot or a spokesperson, right? We're not talking about name and necessarily logo at this point. So if you decide that it is time to make a change, and this is very appropriate when you're talking about actual human spokespeople, because they do have a quite literal life cycle.

21:52And so, yeah, there are times when it makes sense to exit them. And so I think coming up with a story and a narrative around why it's happening, agree, makes all the sense in the world. If you have to make a change, you know, I think it was Lee Iacocca said, never let a good crisis go to waste. Never let a good change that you have to make anyway go to waste. So to the extent that they feel like they needed to make a change, I know there are lots of people who hate that stupid owl. And so maybe their research had told them that, like, look, we've hit a ceiling. And until we get rid of this freaking owl, we're not going to go any further.

22:24So we got to kill the owl. And either way, do it with a story. Create a story. Yep. Yep. And particularly their story, the way they did it, talking about things that their target audience, their ideal target audience would be into. and building the story around those things. Just smart. Okay, so let's - Well, having him get hit by a Cybertruck was, I mean, obvious in retrospect, and that's why it's brilliant. Yeah, that was really, really smart. It's brilliant. So smart. All right, so let's talk about then spokespeople. What are your thoughts? I'm gonna start by just saying, generally, the idea of a spokesperson is that you're tagging onto their credibility.

23:06and we even referred to it in the industry sometimes as a trust agent, that it's somebody that other people already trust that you then put talking about your product. And if they're not an obvious shill, you know, then it could actually be a good thing. Yeah. I think the obvious spokesperson for any brand in the beginning, uh, and likely the most effective, and this is whether you're B2B, B2C is going to be the founder. Yeah. That is just, We've just seen it time and time and time again. They got Sarah Blakely at Spanx and Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway and Branson at Virgin, et cetera, et cetera.

23:44Yep. I mean, even Steve Jobs at Apple. I mean, we just see it time and time and time again. The founder is typically going to be the most effective key person of influence, trust agent to get that brand going, no matter the industry that you are in. Now, and very often they're free because they're already there. you're already paying them. And so I even like, I even like the, uh, the acquirer, like I'd forget if it was Schick or Gillette, but the guy that bought the company said basically the ads back in the, maybe it was the seventies were, I liked it so much. I bought the company and it really got traction.

24:24Right. And, and then it was like, I don't know who this guy is, but apparently some guy that's rich enough to be able to buy a company. And he liked his day on razor so much that he's like, I'm going to be sure these don't go away. I bought the company or Warren Buffett. Who's like, I'm investing heavily in Coke. Cause I like cherry Coke and I want them to keep making cherry Coke. Right. Well, a buddy of mine, Ken Goodrich, who, um, he acquired an HVAC company that was kind of circling the drain out in Phoenix and called Gettle. And his whole thing is I bought this company because when I was a kid, my dad worked for Gettle and he said the Gettle was the best, you know, and I was successful in life and I, and you know, Gettle wasn't doing well.

25:01And so I wanted to revive this company, you know, because my dad's memory, right? Did they advertise around that? Oh God. Yeah. Oh yeah. I literally, he told, he told the story of, um, I mean, the story was when he was a kid, his dad would have him come out on, on jobs, um, and hold the flashlight while he was working on these units at night and he was dispensing wisdom to his kid. And what he didn't realize because his dad didn't tell him is that his dad was sick. His dad had cancer. his dad knew he didn't have long to live yeah and so the all of the memories around like being with his dad working on ghetto machines is a big part of his kind of story and why he wanted to revive the brand as a part of his and so the like if you go and you google ghetto which is spelled a g-o-e-t-t-l it's hard to spell but it's like it sounds you know keep it cold but um yeah but if you go and look at it, the, still the logo, the character is a little boy holding a flashlight.

26:00And that's like, you know, my, my, I got to credit, my, my friend and mentor Roy Williams came up with that whole campaign and everything around that, but it's because he asked the origin story. So very often, if you have an origin story, like you said, it doesn't have to be the founder. It could very well be the acquirer. I think it's such a good point. But the cool thing there is founder, let's call it owner founder owner uh is that now unless you get yourself into trouble which we have seen several founders that went through that whether it's i think it was just a board fight the guy that had men's warehouse or um the uh who was it the um what was the fashion brand that the guy called people fat and said our stuff isn't for fat lemon yeah yeah lululemon it was um that wasn't chip yeah chip wilson he said he said we don't i think he said we don't make clothes but there was another guy i thought it was american i thought it was the company that uh ryan holiday worked yeah yeah um dang yeah i can't remember the name of it yes yes exactly yeah i know i know exactly what you're talking about.

27:08So you can get yourself into trouble. Um, but at least you're answering to yourself. You're not like, you know, you, you get, it's up to you, not up to somebody else that does something terrible and you could pay yourself more, but that's kind of like you're paying yourself more. So that's fine too. So it avoids a lot of things. And I think it's kind of authentic. So it's nice because it's not, you know, paid shill. It's actual real live. I'm here. This is my company. This is my backstory. I think that's, that's a great way to go. If you're not doing that, um, it's something to consider leaning into, right?

27:45Yeah. Sorry, Ryan. What was that? What was that company name again?