Lessons in building authentic brand communities from Duolingo's sociopathic owl

The beginning of July marks school graduation season in China. In Shanghai, language learning app Duolingo joined Xiaohongshu’s University of Life pop-up event, an initiative welcoming graduates to the ‘school of life’ and encouraging them to embark on continuous learning. Armed with a (fake) kitchen knife, Duo, the brand’s iconic owl mascot, chased raced attendees around the event and playfully compelled them to create a 10,000-day language-learning plan. Hilarity ensued.

On the surface and in isolation, this might seem like a silly brand activation. However, it aligns with a running joke among the app’s users. Duolingo's wildly successful approach to user engagement centers on gamification and the daily streak system. This has given rise to a community of regular users committed to maintaining their streak. For them, Duo the Owl is regarded as a half-hilarious, half-tyrannical figure who will make you complete your daily lesson, often with progressively passive-aggressive reminders.

While we doubt that the Duolingo marketing team originally intended to paint Duo as an unhinged taskmaster, the brand has done extremely well by running with the organic community response. Official Duolingo social media accounts lean into the persona and reply in character to user-generated content online, while offline, the brand stages activations such as this one at the Xiaohongshu event.

Duolingo demonstrates that one of the best ways to build an authentic brand community is to center it around shared behaviors and responses that arise organically when users interact with your brand. What common user experience can you lean into?