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The face behind Duolingo’s blockbuster marketing campaigns said virality comes with a human cost.
Zaria Parvez, who announced her departure from her role as senior global social media manager to pursue another social media role, said her best work came when she put work-life balance aside.
“There was a lot of, ‘I’m not gonna check Slack after 5. I’m going to actually work a 40-hour week,'” she said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published on Wednesday. “But I will say, when I didn’t separate my life from my work, I succeeded far more in my role. That’s a hard truth.”
The language learning app is famous for its creative and guilt-inducing app notifications and social media posts. Marketing experts say the approach works, especially with Gen Z, because the app’s green owl mascot appears authentic and consistent. Whether it’s on TV, in YouTube ads, or on TikTok, where Duolingo has over 16.7 million followers, the company is among the first to tap into viral, often country-specific trends.
The 26-year-old marketing manager, who has been at the company for five years, also said she dealt with anxiety because she ran such a successful social media account.
“Last year when I went on medical leave. I was really confused and exhausted,” Parvez said. “It got to the point where the anxiety of running such a big account and having to be always on was so on my shoulders.”
She added: “I would get three hours of sleep at night. I would be incessantly trying to figure out, how do I be creative in all the best ways? How do I do this on my own?”
She said that her family paid attention to her career, too.
Last year, for a marketing stunt, Duolingo faked the death of its green owl mascot. It blew up and received lots of organic engagement from Duolingo users, celebrities like MrBeast and Dua Lipa, and brands such as Hilton, Chipotle, and Netflix. Parvez said that one campaign brought in 1.7 billion social media impressions.
“People thought Duolingo the company had died,” Parvez said. “My mom’s like, did you lose your job?”
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Not all of Duolingo’s messaging has gotten the same stamp of approval from the internet.
Parvez shared a 2021 instance during the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial when Duolingo commented on a TikTok post, and it was not received well by Twitter users.
Earlier this month, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn said the company had dialed back on “edgy posts” after his post on mandatory internal AI usage received harsh social media backlash.
The Duolingo CEO said that “stopping edgy posts” helped turn social media sentiment positive. But he said the move may also have hurt the company’s daily active user count, one of its most important metrics, in the quarter that ended in June.
Duolingo’s stock is up 61% in the last year.
Duolingo and Parvez did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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