Mia Fileman 0:05
Are you tired of marketing jargon and empty promises? Me too. I'm Mia FIleman and this is Got Marketing. On the show I deep dive with marketing insiders to unpack successful campaigns. I didn't earn the nickname the campaign lady for nothing. get actionable tips, learn from winning strategies and avoid falling victim to marketing fads and fakery.
Hello friends, and welcome to the Got Marketing podcast. We're taking it a little bit of a different direction with the podcast in season five, keeping things fresh. And each episode, well, most episodes, we're going to pick a brand or a campaign and we're going to unpack it. Because that's what I feel is the most helpful for smaller brands is to learn and be inspired from other brands and what they're doing incredibly well.
No one is doing it better than Duolingo, the most popular education app with over 500 million learners. If you've heard me talk about marketing ever, you will know that I am absolutely obsessed with Duolingo. And what they're most famous for with their marketing is their social media, which is great, and we're going to talk about it. But actually, their marketing campaigns are world class. Now to have this conversation with me. I have invited Nell Casey on to the podcast.
Nell Casey 1:34
The brand positioning as this really fun, interesting, quite unique brand. They really listened to their customer base and their audience and responded to that. So there's so much stuff that they incorporate into their marketing, and then subsequently into their campaigns.
Mia Fileman 1:51
That was Nell Casey she is the founder of Fete Creative, a brand building copywriting agency helping products based brands become industry icons, as a brand strategist and copywriter. She helps brands and their founders grow visibility, influence, and of course sales. Welcome to the podcast Nell.
Nell Casey 2:11
Hi, how are you?
Mia Fileman 2:13
Good. How are you?
Nell Casey 2:14
Thrilled to be jumping on very early in the morning, my time to talk about Duolingo.
Mia Fileman 2:19
I appreciate it.
Nell Casey 2:21
Because I am obsessed.
Mia Fileman 2:22
Yes. Great. So first question is are you a Duolingo user? And what's your streak?
Nell Casey 2:30
I am a Duolingo user my current streak is I'm just going to bring it up. It's 1475 days.
Mia Fileman 2:39
Oh my gosh.
Nell Casey 2:41
Yeah, I started in lockdown. Like, you know, first rounds, and I have basically kept going I missed a few days here and there, including for the birth of my daughter. But otherwise I am on Duolingo pretty much every single day.
Mia Fileman 2:57
Holy moly. That's impressive. And what are we learning on Duolingo?
Nell Casey 3:00
Espanol.
Mia Fileman 3:03
Muy bueno.
Nell Casey 3:07
What about your stats? Where are you up to?
Mia Fileman 3:08
Okay, so I had a 365 day streak where I was also learning Espanol. And then I moved overseas and Duo just got a little bit too aggressive with me, I found just a little bit annoying while I'm trying to pack up my life, sell all my clothing and move my family overseas in five suitcases. So I turned off notifications kept the app but I have completely lost my streak. And since booking this podcast, I'm on day five of my new streak.
Nell Casey 3:40
Awesome. Duolingo is pushy, definitely like you get the little email you get the push notification. So you get the dings. Certainly there's a reputation for some pushiness happening there.
Mia Fileman 3:52
It's so gamified, which is part of the strategy of keeping people on the app and keeping them learning. But then as a result, someone that's as competitive as I am, can really suffer from that because you know, it's 10pm at night, I'm bone tired. I've had a massive day and then there's this angry owl going to him for a 15 minute lesson. I'm like, no. But then I don't want to lose my streak. And then I was getting obsessed with the leaderboard. And then I had found ways to almost a little bit hack the system and it's like all when I got a power up like when you you get 15 minutes of double points. I would go back and do really easy exercises just to get points that it wasn't actually improving my Spanish.
Nell Casey 4:41
Yeah, that is very much my partner who's super competitive with it. And it's like top of the diamond league at the moment and it's unlike, okay, I hear what you say. But also, it is really in the list of priorities for our day, way down the bottom but he takes it very, very very seriously. So. Yeah, Duolingo features heavily in both the marketing side of things that I look at and also my daily life? So I think it's fun to come on and talk about what that means for their campaigns and from someone who is a user so heavily, and literally is on it every single day.
Mia Fileman 5:22
Yes, I couldn't agree, the perfect guest to have this conversation. So in a nutshell, what are they doing right now?
Nell Casey 5:29
Well, it's definitely that gamification, but really the brand positioning as this really fun, interesting, quite unique brand, they've really listened to their customer base and their audience, and responded to that. So there's so much stuff that they incorporate into their marketing, and then subsequently into their campaigns. And that's kind of the popular culture side of things, you know, that TikTok is absolutely unhinged. Because the whoever is running that TikTok is so tapped into the trends there, that you basically just want to follow that account, even if you weren't necessarily Duolingo user, because it's just hilarious. And it's so on trend. But for someone that is a Duolingo user, there's this real kind of affinity with the brand, you're like, Oh my God, this brand is like so fun. There's no other language learning apps out there that have this funny and this random, and this weird and this bizarre and it carries in from the social media marketing through to the app as well. I mean, we have talked about those notifications, they are annoying. Duolingo kind of leans into that in their marketing, and they have a whole side piece where the bird follows strangers around hassling them to do their Duolingo like it's it's so woven through the marketing, that I think once you get into their world, it's very hard to escape from, which is, you know, from a marketing point of view, what you want.
Mia Fileman 7:04
yeah, so I've never really been a huge fan of trend based marketing in terms of like jumping on the latest trends. And most of that is because you need to be so responsive, like these trends have got a shelf life of anywhere from 24 hours to maximum seven days, and then it's gone. And that requires a whole team to mobilize and get it up because you don't want to be that person that is using their I'm looking for a guy in finance, six, five, blue eyes, three weeks late, like you just you're gonna look like such a laggard. I feel like with Duolingo it works so well because they do have that team they it's not a one woman show running there TikTok, surely. I guess the only thing I will say about it is that if you're not on TikTok regularly, a lot of it's going to go over your head, you're just like, This is weird. Would you agree?
Nell Casey 7:58
There's definitely some stuff on there where you kind of I, I feel so millennial saying this, but I'm like, going online and being like, you know, what's that mean? Kind of thing? Like, can someone just explain to me what this trend is on TikTok? Because I'm not on there that frequently and my side of TikTok is not that like side of TikTok but, you know, as, as someone who is interested in what are they talking about, I sometimes have been known to Google the thing and be like, What is this but yes, I agree as a solo, business owner, marketer, it is not going to be possible to jump on all of those trends. And I don't think it's necessary to be on all of those trends. You know, Duolingo are trying to reach a massive market. Their whole philosophy is like social media first marketing, we need to reach as many people as possible, we need to get them into the app. And you know, again, the whole model is about free use. And then they're hoping to convert some of that user base into paying customers. So they need to have a team that's basically always on. But as a solo brand owner, it's interesting to watch but not something that I'm like, I need to aspire to that kind of level of content as well.
Mia Fileman 9:12
I think what smaller brands can definitely learn from Duolingo social media first strategy is just how native and organic and non promotional it is. I took a contract a couple of years ago with a major arts festival. And they essentially were asking me to take brochures and put them onto Instagram, and I had to have a constant battle about why we just couldn't do that. And that was really, really silly. Duolingo does not sell at all like not, there's no like even pretty cover tiles or overly manufactured content, where it looks like it's advertising. It all looks like someone that is maybe 16 years old, with an iPhone threw this together in five minutes, even though it was probably a very talented social media agency and a social media marketing department with probably professional cameras, but it doesn't look like that. And that's what smaller brands can learn.
Nell Casey 10:12
Yeah, exactly. And what's really interesting about it is you say, from that selling point of view, they don't actually have a call to action to download the app. Like, really, they don't, it's so hidden even in the bottom of their campaigns. And we'll talk about it, it's never like that the pointed direction that they want people to go, it is literally just we want as many people as possible to share what we're doing in the hope that we will pick up users on that basis, because people will be really interested. And once they get a taste of the marketing on social media, they're going to respond really well when we have these bigger campaigns put together, because they're like, Oh, I know. Duolingo. What are Duolingo doing? Oh, wow, what are Duolingo doing? This is actually really incredible. And want to get on that, you know, app as well.
Mia Fileman 11:01
It is actually the purest form of always on marketing. I actually love it, where you use your always on marketing, which is your organic social media strategy, literally just for top of mind awareness. And since they have 500 million users, it's not necessarily about trying to get new users, it is about retaining the existing users that they have and reminding them or you're on TikTok, should you be doing a 15 minute lesson. So they're using the always on strategy for that top of mind awareness. And then they're using their campaigns to really drive conversions or downloads of the app. It's wonderful.
I just want to quickly talk about how they're using LinkedIn. Because this is very fascinating. So on Tik Tok, it's, as you mentioned, now, popular pop culture moments, very trend driven, but they are on LinkedIn, and they are killing it there have they have 506 million followers on LinkedIn. And I find that this is a very interesting strategy for personal brands or thought leadership brands, which is me and a lot of my audience, the co founders have become the face of Duolingo, on LinkedIn. And they use LinkedIn to share the brand story and take LinkedIn users on the journey with them. They showcase how Duolingo runs behind the scenes, they discuss product innovations they are building in public on LinkedIn, what do you think about this strategy from a marketing perspective?
Nell Casey 12:39
Yeah, I think it's really great because it does take you behind the scenes and you real feel a real sense of this. They're not just, you know, a faceless, nameless brand, there's some real heart and soul, which is almost so weird to talk about a corporation like that. But they're showing you behind the scenes, and they're showing you things that make you feel like, even if I couldn't work their cash, I would want to work with their like, you know, they had this great thing. They had like a bring your kids to work day. And it was like 60 kids or something. And they were talking about all the activities that they were doing. And I was like, That is a real company that, you know, yes, they posted it online. But they did that for, you know, for their employees, and a company like that you can't fake that kind of culture. And showing that culture really allows people to get a real sense of what that brand, mission and purpose is all about. And, you know, you don't have to have a massive team. In order to showcase that kind of content on LinkedIn, you can just talk about what are you doing day to day? How are you embedding mission, vision, purpose and values into the actual actions you take, you know, in office or behind your computer at your desk, you know, that's really what it is about, they have a true purpose and a true mission. You can read all about it like this so upfront on their website, in their blogs, like they break down their marketing campaigns, there is so much that they share and allows as a, you know, marketer, we can learn a lot from them. But generally, as someone who's interested in the brand, it allows you to go a lot deeper with them.
Mia Fileman 14:18
I'm just so down for the fact that they're using LinkedIn in such a creative way. Like we've often thought about LinkedIn as this fuddy duddy business to business platform just for services and blue collar professionals and executives. But here is essentially a SaaS product, an app that is using LinkedIn in a very, very non conventional way and killing it.
Speaker 1 14:41
Yeah, and you'll never see them do those like classic LinkedIn posts. So like this morning on my way to work, I came by someone who was stopped on the side of the road and newline decided to stop and help them and this is the lesson I've learned for business like you will not see that on there. It is really heartfelt is really true and it is really quite refreshing. For a platform that can be a little bit, I don't want to I want to say the word wanker-ish.
Mia Fileman 15:08
Stuffy very stuffy Yeah, very stuff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Have you listened to the Duolingo podcast?
Nell Casey 15:15
I have listened to a few episodes after you shared just how amazing they are. And I'm like, What is going on with this spreads like I was, I had not expected I really had only seen the kind of wild, unhinged side of things. And then to listen to the podcast and be like, there are actually some really beautiful stories here. It's yeah, it's totally different. It's really interesting. But I know that you love the podcast. So, you know, tell us about what you love about it.
Mia Fileman 15:16
I absolutely love the podcast. It's like one of my top 10 podcasts to listen to. And it is a very different vibe, as you mentioned, now to the social media, we should talk about whether that's a good thing or not a good thing, because, you know, in terms of consistency, there's none. But what it is, is real life, uplifting and inspirational stories. So, for example, there was a story of a migrant family that left a North African region moved to Paris, they, they opened a bakery and started baking bread. This son grew up in the bakery, and wanted to be a baker, but his family moved him from Africa to Paris, so that they could give him a better life, a bigger life. So he could go to university and they really wanted their son to become an engineer. But he wanted to be a baker. And this caused a massive family rift, where the father and son wouldn't talk. And the mother was caught in the middle. Anyway, the son finally, after pretending that he was an engineering school, just followed his dreams. And he went on to win the most prestigious baking prize in all of Paris, which is the opportunity to deliver baguettes every day to the President of France. And then only after the episode ended, and I am like in tears, did I realize I just listened to that whole thing in French. And I was like, this is genius. I was so engaged. I was so emotionally engaged. I was so invested. I forgot I was learning a second language. Yeah, but it is so different, like that is not their social media strategy. So do you think it makes sense? Are they saying social media is one audience podcasters are just a completely different psychographic. And as a result, we need to different strategies like long form, we can do this short form, we need to do this,
Nell Casey 15:43
it definitely feels that it is more for a customer that is heavily invested in language learning. Whereas the sort of the social media side of things definitely feels much more about brand awareness and customer acquisition. And I think that that's the difference. I think that they've recognized that our language learners, true language learners, not people who are like following for the memes and the funnies. They want to go a bit deeper with their language learning, and they're probably not going to listen to a 20 minute podcast that's all about, you know, DuaLipa, and all that kind of stuff. Like they're not going to invest that heavily into that kind of time. So how can we get people to invest time, deepening a connection to the brand, but really, it's actually strengthening the concept of language learning as a whole idea. Because really, that's their big goal is to encourage people to become true language learners, and also people who understand the culture of the language that they learn. I think that that's been really interesting. And we're going to talk about that a bit later with the campaign that they ran around Game of Thrones. But I think that there's a real sense of like, once people feel a real connection to culture, they're much more likely to continue wanting to learn a language. And I think that that's what the podcasts are about there. It's at the other end of the user base, rather than that acquisition side of things.
Mia Fileman 19:24
That makes so much sense. You know, I think you're spot on that. It's a different objective, and therefore a different strategy. So social media is about acquisition, awareness. And then the podcast is about retention and loyalty as well. Yes, yes, brilliant.
Marketing is a team sport. Join marketing circle and set sail with us. As a member, you get access to all our programs, including the beloved Campaign Classroom, our proprietary campaign builder, and one on one walking meetings with me. Plus, you'll be part of a tight knit community of savvy entrepreneurs and marketers wearing all the hats just like you designed for those who want to build standout brands, our strategic and creative marketing membership is your ticket to future proofing your business, no fluff, no false promises, just real actionable strategies that work. Apply to join Marketing Circle today, and let's navigate those marketing stormy seas together.
All right, let's talk about their campaigns because honestly, the social media and the podcast and even Duo that himself like the character of Duo who is like the brand's spokesperson, if you will, and head language coach, I don't think holds a candle to their campaigns. And so what we're going to do is we're going to discuss four of them. And we're going to take it in turns. So I've assigned you two, and I've assigned myself two. So let's dive in because there's a lot to unpack here. First one. Talk to us about Duolingo on Ice, please?
Speaker 1 21:10
Oh, my gosh, I just love this campaign. I actually posted about it on my my socials are just some of the best April Fool's Day campaigns that came up in this year.
Mia Fileman 21:21
I loved that post, by the way. Loved it.
Speaker 1 21:24
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, April Fool's Day campaigns for Duolingo is now part of their brand identity, it is expected that they will deliver something incredible every single year. They started only a few years ago doing this with the push campaign, but now they're delivering every single year something really interesting. So this year, it was Duolingo on ice, which was kind of a take on of Disney on Ice presented as a four hour skate spectacular. And the launch campaign was on YouTube, it was on all across socials. Great, got some great press around it as well, of course to be expected. But it was the thing that they do really well, is that they do these campaigns that almost feel real, like they leave people asking "Is this real? I would go and watch this."
Speaker 1 22:21
And you know, the whole video that they put together for this campaign had real ice skaters wearing Duolingo themed costumes skating in a choreographed manner on ice. And it was choreographed by like Emmy award winning choreographer, like, they got real people to do real ice skating in real costumes, and then presented as a big joke. And I was just like, This is absolute madness. But it's so so clever. They did this in partnership with SeatGeek, which is a ticketing platform in the US. And basically, that allowed them to create a whole ticketing page that looks like you could go and buy tickets as well to this, again, extending this idea of is this actually a real thing, not just an April Fool's Day joke. And, you know, there's songs that go along with it on Spotify, like you can listen to the album, there is a song that is now stuck in my head, it is now entered, like Duolingo is kind of whole thing Spanish or vanish is, you will never get that out of your head if you hear that song once. So I do not recommend going to listen to it. And you know, so they have this full multi platform campaign running. And it's really something quite incredible to see how they put this together, they start out with this mad idea and run it all the way through to the end. And that real commitment to the bid, I think is what makes these kinds of campaigns really work.
Mia Fileman 23:58
Exactly could not agree more. And going into the second campaign that we want to talk about, which is love language. Again, the audience were left questioning, is this real? So let me talk you through this one. This was a fictional reality TV show. made to look so real that if you go and have a look at the comments on this post, and I'll put it in the show notes. Every comment is I can't wait for this is this real? Bring it on. I can't wait to watch this. And what it was was a bunch of gorgeous bikini clad strangers put into a house Big Brother style. But none of them could communicate because they didn't speak the same language. So the concept is just genius. And what I really love about this is that even though it's funny and hilarious and satirical Duolingo is the hero of this story because as an audience member you're left thinking But if they downloaded Duolingo and learned a language, they would be able to communicate, and then they would find love and like so, you know, we can bridge that gap. But it was genius. And the strategy here is edutainment, so education, meeting entertainment, because what your lingo have figured out is that we have an abundance of time, and bandwidth and attention span to stream, you know, Game of Thrones episodes, which go for an hour, and Netflix. But we have micro moments that we're willing to dedicate to something like learning a language like trying to get people to spend 15 minutes. So if they can bridge that gap, and make education entertaining, then it changes the game for them, and how long people are willing to spend on their app, and also engage with their marketing. And they do this really well as an in app experience as well. There are videos there are funny, they've got funny characters, the characters say funny things, like they're really bringing that entertainment value. Very good example of culture jacking, because what is a very popular type of reality TV show these days is Love is Blind, or Big Brother, or Bachelor or F-boy Island, like all of these Married at First Sight. And they really leaned into this with love language.
What's so interesting about the love language campaign was that it was actually a collaboration with a streaming platform called Peacock, which made it so believable because it had peacock branding on the trailer. That's what they share. So they created a legitimate trailer, it looks so real with peacock branding. And so people were like, well, is this actually going to be streaming on peacock? And I think it was just a really clever collaboration, where Peacock has their audience of engaged streamers, and Duolingo has their audience of engaged app users. And they were just using this to tap into each other's audience, thereby doubling their reach 100 out of 10.
Nell Casey 27:18
Yeah, it's so so clever. And the way that they do those collaborations with the platform's now, I think that they've now that's a real masterclass in how to leverage your audience and another brand's audience, and to not just, like, send out emails to both lists, or you know, whatever, but to actually find a way to collaborate that feels aligned to both brands. And it's that real enough to be possible kind of idea that helps these campaigns go so viral.
Mia Fileman 27:56
That's such a good point. Because, you know, I'm ex corporate, I don't know if you are now but I would imagine, you know, in a L'Oreal or Kraft boardroom, and we bring in a collaboration partner, we're like, hey, let's create something cool together. And it all gets scrapped. Because it's like, Nah, my brand guidelines won't allow me to do that. And my logo needs to be bigger. And then as a result, it just all falls flat. Because each person is trying to stick to their corporate brand identity. Whereas it seemed like these two brands are just like, fuck it. Let's just create something really good. Fuck it. What about High Valyrian?
Speaker 1 28:43
Yeah, moving on from things that felt almost too good to be real. And they weren't, is to something that's actually real. Like you can learn. High Valyrian on Duolingo. So high valyrian for anyone that has not tuned into one of the top rating shows in the last 10 years is the language spoken in Game of Thrones. So it is a type what do they call it a con-lang, a constructed language. So basically, George RR Martin who wrote Game of Thrones, he's, you know, put a few of these words scattered throughout the original manuscript. And then when they brought Game of Thrones onto HBO, so to produce the original series, they got this guy called David Peterson who's like apparently Hollywood's like it-guy for developing new languages for shows and he constructed high valerian the language. And that was for the show now. And you only go had actually collaborated with him in 2019 to get high valerian onto the Duolingo app, but I think it was a very quiet, sort of reveal for that round. I could not find a lot of stuff that really talked about when they first got high valerian onto the App, they did have some users, obviously people who are very, very into Game of Thrones and into immersive experiences, started learning high valerian through the app. But at this pre launch of the Game of Thrones prequel, which is house of the dragons, HBO and Duolingo, partnered up again, collaboration, and they sort of re launched the high valyrian language on to Duolingo. They kind of revamped it, added some new, some new phrases and stuff like that, and then put together this whole campaign of the prequel launch. And it was incredible, really smart targeting, so they put up billboards and posters in Times Square, and then around Comic Con in New York. And it was all written in High Valyrian. I know, brilliant, right? You know, your audience when you're doing that. And it was over in in high valerian. So you know, unless you had learned high valerian, you would not understand what these posters were saying. And then that sort of directed people on to the app to download to start letting high valerian, they ran a competition in app to be the leader of the leaderboard for high valerian, we know, we've talked about the gamification of the whole Duolingo app itself. And the winner, you know, in that period, would actually receive a real sword that had, you know, High Valyrian and it was so beautiful in the way that they integrated real world, and in-app experiences, and again, that whole idea of culture jacking. So the people that are going to come on and want to learn High Valyrian are the people that are big fans of the Game of Thrones series, and who want to extend that, that interest and that immersion into learning the language and but that's not a big pool of people, right? When we, when we talk about all the users who are going to possibly get onto game of, sorry, to get onto Duolingo. That's not a big pool of people. Like I want to learn high valerian personally, I'm like, that's cool. But I don't really want to learn high valerian. But what it did do was, again, allowed them to have this story about them. So they got the most media attention for that particular campaign out of anything that else that they had done. So many articles were written, not just about the you could learn High Valyrian but then what people did with High Valyrian, once they'd learned it. So a couple ran their entire wedding ceremony in High Valyrian. Like, that is real nice, right. And clearly, that's a group of people that are very invested in the whole game of thrones and that beautiful like culture, but that got them more stories about the learning that language. And then once you have people who are like in app learning High Valyrian, they're very likely to learn another language as a result of it. So there is some user-like generation around that. But really, it's just another example of how Duolingo ran a campaign in collaboration with another brand, and culture jacking at the same time. So what is really getting people's attention right now is the house of the dragons in that new release, and a true understanding of an audience base that would be interested in that particular offer for them. And, you know, it's, again, a real moment to kind of go Duolingo are committed to not just the campaign, but to their purpose, you know, allowing people to learn a new language. And that's what comes through. With that, you know, high valerian is not the only constructed language you can learn on the app, which again, is really interesting, you know, there's, there's some sub languages that you can learn that have no purpose, except if you're heavily invested in a particular show, or brand. And yet, anyone that's invested enough to learn a constructed language is probably much more likely to then go on and learn a real language as well.
Mia Fileman 34:04
It also, just, as you said, it drives home their their purpose of it doesn't matter what language it is, if you want to learn a language, you'll learn it at Duolingo. We don't just stick to French, Spanish and English because those are the most popular that we are inclusive in our demographics and our psychographics of our users that sometimes they want a constructed language there even they've got endangered languages on Duolingo like Hawaiian and there was there was one I've one other where it's like they're purists when it comes to languages about the preservation of languages, whether they're constructed or real. High Valyrian won a Cannes Lion Award, which is the most prestigious advertising award that you can win. And with that comes so much earned media as you mentioned, Nell, that is free media. They eat earn like you you couldn't open a business or marketing publication and not read about their campaigns because they just generate so much free media coverage.
The last campaign I want to talk about is Emily in Paris. This predates all the others. So it was one of the first ones. This is Genius plot. So it is filmed in what looks like Paris, it may or may not be. And we meet a series of women named Emily, but they are actually French, and they speak French. And they are having a little bit of a crack about the other, Emily, and how she came to live in Paris. But she doesn't speak any French. And this is such a self. Well, it's not really self deprecating, because Duolingo goes not French, but it's definitely poking fun at the French, which universally we all agree we're allowed to do. Because they take themselves so seriously that we're allowed to make fun of them. So it is about sort of tapping into that French culture of you know, you're not you're not welcome in France unless you speak French. But what's really going on here from a strategy is the Netflix effect, which is the same strategy as Duolingo. High Valyrian. So the Netflix effect is really well documented, which is basically since Netflix started, streaming products and brands that are featured in some of their programming go on to have incredible success. So the one that we first noticed was chess sets during the Queen's gambit that suddenly chess was cool again, and the amount of people playing chess online and buying chess sets, quadrupled like it was like a 500% increase. And then squib games came along, and everyone was buying those Dunlop volley white sneakers. And then bridgerton came and we're all shopping for corsets. And you know, intricate tablecloths with floral patterns and floral crowns. And brands have realized that this is a real thing, that they can either partner with shows and do a proper collaboration, or they can just sort of ride on the coattails of a show. So I don't know if Duolingo paid to be involved with Emily in Paris or whether they just went and made their own campaign. I'm not sure if it was a collaboration or whether they just rode on those coattails, but it is absolutely brilliant.
Nell Casey 37:40
Yeah, it's such a great campaign. I love looking at it as well, I it makes me actually want to learn French and move to Paris and toss my hair and the way they all have their like their beautiful hair just sort of like us, but it's so perfect. And I was like
Mia Fileman 37:53
effortlessly chic, shopping for cheese.
Speaker 1 37:59
Just watching that campaign. I was like, Oh, maybe I should switch to learning French?
Mia Fileman 38:06
Well, it has been an absolute pleasure chatting with you about Duolingo is genius marketing. Do you have anything final you'd like to add on this topic, Nell?
Speaker 1 38:18
I really just think that you're looking through it. And obviously understanding the budget and the resources that Duolingo have available to them, it can feel a bit like this is out of reach for smaller brands. But I don't necessarily think that that is the case, you know, yes, you can't get a billboard in Times Square, that's probably not going to be possible in a small business budget. But there are ways to look at what do Duolingo do really well and then apply that to the small business kind of marketing. So yes, it is looking at maybe some culture jacking what's coming up on Netflix, you know, we know Bridgerton is about to rerelease a new thing is that aligned with your brand to run something that, you know, takes that sort of trend and applies it to what you're doing. Can you find brands that are maybe not clearly aligned, but you could partner with in order to reach both audiences, but also do something that's really fun, and bridges the gap between the two of you like, there's so many ways that you can take what they're doing and apply it to a smaller brand. And it's just getting a little bit creative about what that particular campaign might look like. And I think that that's what's really fun about looking at these big campaigns. It's like you can actually have a whole heap of fun running a campaign. And can we just think a little bit outside the box on how to do that?
Mia Fileman 39:41
I love that suggestion, actually made a similar one in my emails to my audience saying you know, if you are a fashion brand, or you have a fashion blog, like why not do looks inspired by Emily in Paris or how to create a bridgerton picnic and And then like you said, like if you go on to Netflix right now you can see which shows I've got a coming or season two. There's a, there's actually the first ever Greek language TV show on Netflix. It's called Maestro in Blue. It was sensational. And season two is coming. And it's filmed on the island of Paxos, like tour operators, Greek sandals, Greek jewelry, Duolingo, all of these brands can tap into the Netflix effect with the next season of Maestro in blue and Stranger Things. They partnered with Ben and Jerry's on like weird, ice cream flavors. And yeah, so just that the opportunities are limitless. If you swing for the fences creatively,
Nell Casey 40:50
Yes, I love that. I love that that is a great takeaway from this.
Mia Fileman 40:54
So how can people work with you Nell, because you obviously some have some incredible marketing experience and insights to share, what's the best way to get in touch.
Speaker 1 41:04
So you can head to my website, which is Fete Creative, if you want to read more about me, or come on to Instagram @Fetecreative as well. And we can just chat things marketing, I'm looking to move a lot of my business over to running more courses and products because I am really at capacity with my client side of things, which is great. But you know, if you reach out, I can see what's happening. But yeah, I just froth on these kinds of conversations. So you send me a link to something and I will probably then send you five voice messages back again, like talking about the campaign or ideas to apply it to your business. So please just reach out because that is actually what I look for.
Mia Fileman 41:48
I can confer that that is exactly Nell operates. And it is just an absolute delight. Because marketers are my people. I love them. They I get them. They get me it's yeah, it's it just really lights me up. It was an absolute pleasure chatting with you today. I really love this conversation. And thank you so much for being so generous with your time and your ideas.
Nell Casey 42:10
Thank you.
Mia Fileman 42:14
Thank you, you listened right up until the end. So why not hit that subscribe button and keep the good marketing rolling. Podcast reviews. I'll have warm hugs, and they're also the best way to support a small business. You can connect with Mia Fileman on Instagram or LinkedIn and feel free to send me a message. I'm super friendly.
