Emmanuel Orssaud (Duolingo) | April Fool's Day Measured in Smiles

25:46So I'm very, very conscious of this, that context that is so, so important for a CMO to succeed is also how much my boss is willing to let me succeed and take risks. Then I think the culture that we build at Duolingo, I mean, inherently, I was talking about this idea of fun. It's really part of the DNA of how we work as an organization. I truly, in my core, believe that marketing should be fun. You want to create emotions with people. And one of the best emotions you can have is a smile, something that makes you laugh. That's the stuff you remember because it makes your day better. It makes everything better.

26:26And in a world where people are just, there's just not enough time to consume. You just want to be able to produce content that is here to make a mark on people, on their heart, on their mind. And fun is really what we excel at. So when we vet ideas, you know, and me, when I sit in the room and with my team, and then when they come to me for reviews or inputs, I sense a lot of the vibes that come around those ideas. I often can tell you if one of our ideas is going to be successful just by looking and feeling the excitement of the people that are here in the room presenting this. And that's usually how I gauge whether something is worth doing or not.

27:04And it's true because, again, I go back to this idea of authenticity. It's really key to the culture of what we're trying to do. I want, from the hiring, having people that are into fandoms, whether it's K-pop or F1, having that something new to bring in a way that feels authentic, where they're really passionate about it, helps to create content that is memorable and that feels right for the audience that we're reaching. So I really focus on that. And then I mentioned to you this idea of humility, which is very core to the way we build the culture of our team, where I don't want anyone in the team to have to argue for projects that have failed without feeling defensive about them.

27:43Because I think that's the worst that can happen, is to be able to really talk about everything in the open the way it is with objectivity. And this idea of humility is grounded in this, right? So to be able to say, okay, this didn't work, but these are the learnings we have from it. And giving the team that sense of, okay, it's fine. No one is going to get in trouble. As long as we have good learnings, that's the most important thing that matters. And I think that's really, really hard to get right in a team. And I think it took me a while to get there and I'm still working on it. It's not perfect, but letting people be able to express humility in the way that they do.

28:16But also for myself saying to the team that I don't know what marketing will be in two years. We need to figure this out together. I don't have a grand plan. It's just going to be around experimentation and continuing to learn and fail and win sometimes. So that's the way the culture works. Now, Luis, your CEO has this great appetite for risk. He hates being vanilla or the thought of being vanilla. Where did that come from in him? Is there a brand or a business that he's admired? Is there a life experience he has had to give him that mindset? Because it's a bit unusual for a CEO. I don't know the personal story behind this mindset, but he's someone who's a very, very strong product person.

28:54He has a very, very strong vision for the product and very quickly understood that as a way to stand out, you need to have product visually that is different and you're taking risk with this in a way that your product is your brand and you can create more from it. And I think, you know, that vision, the vision is still, is still here and, and, and it's part of the risk-taking, right? Where we really believe in the IPs that we have, that we've created with the product, with all the different characters, with the Duolingo universe we've created, right? And, and taking risk in that we want those, those characters and that brand to, to exist beyond the product.

29:30And I think, you know, he has very bold and clear vision around this, which is really inspiring. And definitely when you think it's just a learning app, right, I think it's pretty phenomenal to think, you know, that it's not like an entertainment product necessarily, right, like a Netflix or a Spotify. But I think the vision around the brand just transcends the product and the direct use of the product, which I think is really inspiring and amazing.

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31:07You've been talking a lot about how you work and the culture. I'd like to talk a bit about you, Manu, and where you focus, where you spend. If we looked at your diary for the last six months, what will we conclude from that? Where's your focus? Where's your energy? Where's your personal time going? I've got two teams, right? I do allingo. I've got the executive team, which is a very different type of work. And I spend about 30 % there, I would say. It's everything from M &A strategy to people strategy to thinking about every day, being a public company as well, right? Thinking about all the rituals that come every quarter from this.

31:46There's a good chunk of my time. And the rest is really with the team. I always try to be that leader that is here and available to them, while at the same time, never wanting to be the one breathing in the neck. So I give the team a lot of trust and freedom. I spend a lot more time thinking about how do we frame their work? How do we frame their responsibility in the team? How do we give them clarity around KPIs, what matters in their work? And to me, it's ensuring that clarity is there. And that's what I spend most of my time. You know, it's really around that. Defining what grid looks like, defining, setting up benchmarks, calls, clarity for the team.

32:27And yeah, and I'm available to them. So I spend a lot of time with them when they have questions. You know, we have this ritual now that has been around for the last six months or so where I have two slots every week in my calendar for an hour. And we call that marketing reviews. Office hours, but focused on work where they come in and they've blocked 15 minutes. And we talk about projects. We share ideas that share either for green lights, for a thumb up or for feedback. And it's been working really, really well. So it's that kind of process that we have that is pretty fluid. But the team now knows what to come to me for and also know where the line is.

33:03And it's funny because I don't approve anything that goes on our social media. But sometimes I would receive a message on Slack going, hey, we think this is crossing the line or it's very close to the line. And can we get a second opinion? And, you know, that's usually how I interact with the team. How often does that happen? You know, less and less. It doesn't happen very often, actually. I would say maybe every once a month maximum. It's something that we managed to figure out very well. You find a line. You know where the line is once you cross it. And we've had to cross the line to know where the line is.

33:38And I think now there's a much better understanding of this. And it's great because when a team comes to me, I understand why they come to me. Hey, I'd like to talk about briefly two kind of hot current issues in marketing. One is brand and performance marketing, the tension between the two. And the second is social media is a growth driver. And you have a pretty clear point of view on each because I've heard you express it. So the first on brand and performance marketing, I mean, I've written about this. I talk about a lot in this show. You call it the short and long game. So could you talk about your strategy in this space because it seems to be working very well.

34:16You're building a brand and you're building new users and you're building loyal users. So how do you think about it? What could others learn from how you think about the two, those two concepts? A couple of things on this. I mean, one is to understand the business of Duolingo. We are in the business of retention. We make a product that is here to teach you how to learn. We make it fun because we know that if it feels like a chore you know when you come back every day but the only way for you to really feel the tangible outcome of our product is to have the discipline of coming back every day and at that point you'll start to learn and you'll start to feel great about yourself and you'll start talking about your lingual to your friends and family and convincing more people to come so for us retention is is very very key and it's the core of our business we figured out that through experimentation, you know, back to that expand.

35:06When we create content on social, when we are there on a daily basis and our audience sees our brand, it acts almost as a reminder to do your lesson. And our brand marketing is here to do exactly that. It's to not even, you know, people talk about top of mind awareness. For us, it's daily top of mind awareness. That's really the KPI. It's very much to ensure that people have an interaction with our brand, at least on a daily basis. And for us, that's the best way to make a marketing work. The other part of this is we've got, you know, I come from a content marketing background with, you know, both Spotify, PlayStation, very, very strong content brands.

35:48And I think, you know, with Duolingo, we don't have the luxury of content coming every day. So we have to create ourselves, right? So the good thing is we have an hour and we have something that is pretty interesting, which is language. And language connects to so many, many different things when it comes to culture, from the shows you watch on Netflix to when you listen on Spotify, to the food that you cook, right? So many aspects that connect to language, which is an extremely interesting and creative territory. So, you know, we try to think about brand building in a sense where we look at a language, we look at culture, and we try to find that intersection that allow us to connect our brand to the fandoms that people may have in a way that feels as authentic as possible.

36:31And that, in turn, helps us to grow our user base. But all of this is grounded in data, actually. If you look at the way we were doing marketing four or five years ago, we have this way to measure our impact, which is, especially on the brand side, every single new user that comes to Duolingo, we ask them, how did you hear about us? It's a very simple but very effective way to get self-reported attribution data. And because we have hundreds of thousands of new users on a daily basis, we have volume that gives us significant visibility on what's working and what's not. So we had this. We were launching some TV campaigns that were very much like very polished, very perfectly designed, using our characters, quite safe, not with an unhinged tone that we have now.

37:16Yeah, I remember. Yeah. And, you know, we didn't see those big spikes in users attributing their registration to TV. And it's only when we started experimenting a lot more with social and creating those narratives around the owl, tapping into new fandoms, that we saw those huge correlations between TikTok that does super well and a strong user intake, attributing their registration to TikTok. And that's how we figured out that building the brand can drive growth. And so we doubled down on that. And that's been our strategy. Content-first marketing distributed through social channels. social channels.

37:50And that is the vast majority of what marketing does on a daily basis and what drives the biggest impact, both for the user, as I explained, but also for that ongoing engagement on a daily basis. I read about your system for thinking about where and when you appear in social. And it's also very data-driven. And I know you leverage AI in doing that, but you do seem to appear in the right places at the right time to get maximum attention, content, affection, smiles. So could you talk briefly about how you've set that up and why that works so well for you? Yeah. One, I guess it's going back to what you were talking about culture.

38:31We're able to move with a lot of agility and speed in the team. Something that I try to nurture a lot. One, I don't want people to spend their time writing decks. I'd rather have them do content and create good ideas. So we tend to not have a lot of documentation or people having to justify ideas. We try to move as fast as we can. We have a pretty flat organization, so that removes the need for layers and layers of approval. Approval only happens in a light way when the team needs it. So there's a lot of empowerment in order to move fast. And then the what I think comes from the hiring strategy and who we have in the team who understands really our audience and understand what's top of mind for them because they share the same fandom, they listen to the same artists, they know what's happening in culture at the right moment, because they live and breathe that same culture that our audience does.

39:20And then there's the more data-led aspect. So we look at, through tools that we've built internally, some of them using a bit of AI, we're able to identify topics of interest that over-index within our audience. We mine the data, we look at the comments, we look at hashtags they've used, et cetera, And we look at what are some of the topics that come on top. And then we are able to compare that to the broader user base on TikTok. And so we can see, for example, things like Roblox index is really high within our community of fans on TikTok. And so we use that as a way to guide ourselves towards the fandoms that really matter to our audience.

40:01I want to talk just about your career path for a moment. You have two really interesting brands in your background, right? Spotify and PlayStation, a big part of my life, my family's life. Could you talk a little bit about how that prepared you for this great run you've had as CMO of Duolingo? Oof, that's a great question. I mean, a few things that come to mind, I would say one, the first one is probably when I was at PlayStation, I had the opportunity to join PlayStation at a perfect time when such a strong content brand like PlayStation was seeing the rise of YouTube, first iPhone, and the digital landscape completely changing, right?

40:38And the way we were distributing content. And that opened up a lot of opportunities and learning for me around, you know, taking risks and really being curious about understanding change in landscape and having to navigate that and understanding that whatever happens tomorrow is definitely not going to be like what happens today. And you need to stay on your toes all the time to figure out what's going to be next. So I think that was one of the big learning from my time at PlayStation was also this idea of you have to try. You have to put yourself out there and be aware of how the landscape is changing all the time.

41:16And I'm very grateful to have been at PlayStation at that time when everything was happening. Spotify, I think, was more around more the creative excellence, I would say. That really is what I've seen and learned a lot at Spotify was just having some really strong creative brains. and also that tone and humor that we had. I mean, we were very famous at the time for out-of-home billboards at Spotify, having some fun copy and data storytelling. I was there when all of this was happening and when we were figuring those campaigns there, as well as Wraps, right? How to work well with products as a marketer and find ways to collaborate well in those cross-functional environments and be able to convince them of opportunities to bring Wrapped, which was an external marketing-led company that had nothing to do with the product, to finally integrate that within the product.

42:08I'm very proud to have been a big part of that decision. And so I've learned how to work in those types of environments. But also I've learned a lot about this sense of content is key. Content is key for marketing. Duolingo was a first for me to not be in a content-led brand as such, but be able to reinvent that in the world of Duolingo was really fascinating. tone, humor, be able to take creative risks. I think all of this has been has been following me through my career all the way to Duolingo.

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43:42Let's move to the creative brief. My first question is you're learning Japanese. Why did you choose that language? I love Japan. It's just a fascinating culture. It is. I was lucky to go there a lot when I was at PlayStation and then at Spotify as well. But yeah, I always love going back there. And it's a very daunting language because it's so good. But now, you know, what's great is while I'm progressing, at least being able, you know, to go to Japan and be able to read things. It's so gratifying. And that happens quite quickly, actually, when you start learning your language. Once you start recognizing some of the characters and be able to read some things, it feels very gratifying.

44:20Our first international assignment with P &G was Prague. And this is before you were around. I took a tutoring every morning for about 45 minutes before my workday in Czech. And my wife did the same. It was hard. Oh, yeah. Again, it was just a very, very difficult language. But I got to the point where I could have little conversations and I could read things on billboards and read menus and go to the grocery store. It made my life better. That's great. But you were not around. It would have been faster if you were around. So Manu, what's the first brand you remember making an impact on you as a young boy?

44:51When I think about the first brand, it's not necessarily the first brand that I've noticed, but it's the first brand that I've really encountered as a brand that has been following me through my life. So I'm originally from France, a big culture of food around me as I was growing up. And the brand that really sticks to my mind as I was growing up is actually Le Creuset, the homeware brand. And it's a brand that I've seen in my household as a kid without realizing it's actually a brand, but I've seen my family getting together every Sunday around a big pot of Le Crozet with those bright colors that are so iconic.

45:24As I grew up, as I became an adult, as I had my first apartment, being able to, my grandmother gave me one of the pot that she had. And it's a brand that has really followed me through my life, from my childhood to my adulthood. It's a brand that I think has a strong emotional connection to me because I have seen my family. I love those brands that have such heritage and so connected to your personality and your emotions and brands that, you know, have been part of those emotions. And it's funny because look, to me, it's, you know, I just remember one thing visually when I was a kid is that bright orange, the bright orange pots sitting in the middle of the table, you know, that visual connection has really been part of my life since then.

46:05It's fascinating those brands. We got bright blue for our wedding decades ago. We still have it. And they last for it. Yeah, they do, which is beautiful. Yeah. Now, what's the most moving or inspiring story you've heard or experienced with a Duolingo user? We have some stories that our community sent us from sometimes, but I think there's this one where some people actually met on Duolingo and got married because of Duolingo. They started following each other and learning on Duolingo and they got to meet in real life at some point and they decided to get married. So it's fascinating to think that.

46:40You're a dating app too. A language app can actually be a dating app. So I find it's quite amazing. We hear those stories about people getting married, but also people getting better lives out of using Duolingo and learning a language in general. That's why Duolingo exists at heart. The mission is very much about giving people those opportunities in life by learning a language or learning on Duolingo. And so it's great to be able to work for a company that has such a great mission at heart. If the owl were a guest on this show, we talked about that at the beginning of our recording. What question should I be sure to ask the owl?

47:18Who knows how he would respond, but should I ask the owl to begin with? Oh, interesting. You should ask the owl, how was his date with Jua Lipa last night, I guess. Okay, that would be good. That'd be a good way to start. It would be a popular show. I'm sure. The owl would have plenty of things to talk about. Have you ever been in an owl costume, Manu? Do you know, it's interesting. I have not. I haven't been in the owl costume yet. I will, I'm sure at some point be in the owl costume. That's for sure. But yeah, we have plenty, plenty of people wanting to be in the owl costume. It's a great way to get your moment of celebrity without revealing yourself too much.

47:56It's popular. Well, I want to bring my producer Judy in here before we close this episode. She's a big fan of your company, a big fan of the owl. Judy, is there anything you'd like to ask Manu about anything we've talked about? Your team, your social media teams are absolutely incredible. Could you talk a little bit about the death of Duo? Talk a little bit about that and just share like maybe where that came from, how each of your incredible international teams sort of jumped on that bagwagon. All the brands that got into it was incredible. That was really funny to watch. We change our icon look from time to time because what we see is that it's actually a quite strong driver for resurrection, for resurrecting people because they noticed something different on their phone screen.

48:37And, oh, what happened to the Duolingo icon? Where does the face look different? They click on it and they get back into their lesson. So it's a pretty simple but very effective way to get you to do your lesson. We were brainstorming around what the next look should be, and there were a few options. And then this idea of doing the Duolingo face with the dead eyes was one of them. And that was really inspiring for the team. And so with this idea, the entire narrative was created, right? of the duo DL dying and us saying that DL is dead and then resurrecting a few years later. But what's fascinating is that a lot of the storyline was invented along the way because we were not expecting this to be such a big hit.

49:18I mean, it was, we got 1.7 billion organic impressions for this one and it's just incredible. But it was an amazing collaboration between our product team and marketing, which is awesome when that happens. You know, when those two things kind of happen together, I love it. But yeah, it was a huge moment And we were not expecting it. So we had to cancel a lot of our work so that we can capitalize on the moment, even the work that we did locally in our markets, right? The Japan team, for example, said, no, DL is not dying in Japan because this is not seen as a funny thing in Japan. So all the hours died around all of our social accounts except Japan, where Japan stayed alive and I am strong.

49:55So you are so steeped into content, Manu. What are you enjoying these days when you're not on Duolingo studying Japanese? What kind of content? i mean i watched on netflix i mean i saw obviously the uh amazing adolescence show last week yeah so so good i mean that's been on my mind since then just how beautifully done it is uh and so well produced but yeah you know we all bring our fandoms my fandom for the team we were talking about is the other day is um eurovision you know i don't know if you know about oh yeah i'm the one the one having that fandom for the team so helping to inform our creative strategy around this and what we should do and how we can tap into that moment.

50:31So it's fun. You know, it's fun that we all share different things as a team. Okay, Manu, last question we usually ask guests, who's been the most inspiring person in your life? My partner, actually, my other half, just because he's been through a lot in his life and has been able to rebounce and taken a different path in life in his career now. And I think, you know, he requires a lot of bravery and courage. And I always admire people that have a lot of courage. It's never easy, but it's just great to see people around there that embrace courage and don't know what tomorrow will be, but they make the choice that I'll write for them and follow their heart.

51:12So I find that very inspiring. What's his career direction? So he was a CMO as well. He was at Tesco Mobile and then decided to change his career to become a coach, an executive coach. So now he's a coach and he's very much enjoying it. It took him a while to figure this out. He quit his job and spent a year or even two, I would say. Someone said to him, in order to find your path, you need to have 200 coffees with random people. That's good advice. And so he started people on LinkedIn and reaching out and trying to find time to meet and then through that process, he figured out, which is pretty amazing.

51:48When I left P &G many years ago, a counselor actually said to me, who P &G had arranged for me to meet to make sure I was making the right decision, go have coffee, lunch, dinner, whatever, with half a dozen to 10 people whose lifestyle you really admire. First of all, thinking about those people whose lifestyle I admire is a big question. And then after three or four of those, I knew what I wanted to do. That's great. Very powerful advice. 200 is better than six or 10, but I didn't have that time for 200. it. That's probably why it took him two years. Well, Manu, this has been wonderful. I knew it would be.

52:23You know, when I do these interviews, if in my mind during the interview, I'm thinking about the various people I want to send this to, because I know it will be extremely helpful for what they're going through at this time in their life. I had lots of names come up as you were speaking. That's all to me, a KPI for a fabulous discussion. That's fantastic. I'm glad to hear. So thank you so much. I hope to see you in person one of these days. Yeah, I would love that too. Hopefully soon. That was my conversation with Manu Orso. Three takeaways from this one for your business brand and life. First one is be a challenger and a leader.

52:54I love that thought, the duality of that. Here's Duolingo as the leader in their space by far, and still has this mindset that we're a challenger. And that results in a culture that is very special. And I want to go to my second takeaway, because the culture at this place is something to be admired and something to emulate. I mean, Manu talked over and over again about smiles as a KPI, about risk-taking, about support, about new people coming to Pittsburgh to experience the brand, to experience the culture so they could take it back to their market. So there was so much in here about building a culture of brand building and of experimentation and of winning and success.

53:37And the third takeaway, I love this thought of grind and expand. About 70 % of your effort should would be applying what works and do it better and better. And about 30 % of your efforts into thinking about big ideas that are very difficult to measure in the beginning, but always to start with a hypothesis, try the idea and then do the learning afterward. They're not a crazy circus where they're experimenting with all kinds of nutty things. They're doing it with discipline and creativity. That's it for this episode of the CMO Podcast. If you found this helpful and entertaining, I would be so grateful if you could share our show with your friends.

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