Duolingo embraces 'Barbie' movie cameo with new ad

After Duolingo’s bright green owl mascot Duo made a surprise appearance at the star-studded “Barbie” premiere in Los Angeles last week, the language learning app is making the jump from the “pink carpet” to the movie screen with a 30-second ad spot running before the movie.

Dozens of brands have cashed in on the marketing frenzy surrounding “Barbie”—which, after months of pop culture hype, is now in theaters. While the majority of these brands have tied themselves to the highly-anticipated film with hot pink product collaborations, Duolingo is unique among this rush, as the app is actually featured in the film.

Also see: The ad industry gets in on the ‘Barbie’ craze

The brand’s inclusion in the wildly popular “Barbie” movie is merely a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment—(spoiler alert) its “ding” sound effect plays when a person submits a correct answer on the Duolingo app. Its marketing team immediately sought to capitalize on its inclusion, however minor, James Kuczynski, Duolingo’s creative director, told Ad Age.

“When the Mattel team and the Warner Bros. team mentioned that we’d be featured in the ‘Barbie’ film, I think we were all expecting Duo was somehow being featured to some extent,” he said. “But even though it was actually just our sound effect, we wanted to jump on that moment with Duo and the persona we have around Duo of being kind of an influencer now.”

More news: How ‘Barbie’ lured new fans

After hearing about Duolingo’s Easter egg in the film, Kuczynski and the marketing team immediately secured Duo’s appearance at the Los Angeles “Barbie” premiere, where the green owl mascot rubbed elbows (or wings) with the movie’s biggest stars, including Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, and macro-influencers including Alix Earle and Chris Olsen.

The team quickly designed a hot pink, sparkly cowgirl-inspired vest and pants set, along with a tiny white cowboy hat, for Duo to wear to the premiere, as a nod to an outfit Robbie wears as Barbie in the film.

“We’re starting to see the earned media that is just automatically generated when we have Duo show up somewhere,” Kuczynski said. “I think my favorite piece of content out of the ‘Barbie’ premiere is actually the Getty Images-watermarked Duo photo. You can’t pay someone for that—it just happens. And it’s those earned media, word of mouth moments that help elevate our brand.”

Kuczynski and the team weren’t satisfied with only having Duo strut the pink carpet. The same weekend of the premiere, while they had the costume available, the marketing team partnered with a small, L.A.-based production studio, méShell Studio, to film the pre-movie spot.

“It was all about making the most of a weekend of having Duo in L.A. and capturing as much content as we possibly could,” Kuczynski said. “The cost of shipping Duo[’s costume] can be more expensive than you’d think.” 

They based the 30-second video on the actual scene in the film that includes the Duolingo sound effect, in which a character is doing a lesson on their phone to learn the Spanish word for “pen,” as a way to emphasize that minor moment in the movie and help viewers “make that connection” between that brief sound effect and Duolingo, Kuczynski said. 

The ad begins with a photo shoot of Duo donning the outfit he wore to the “Barbie” premiere, before transitioning into a similar language lesson from the film that teaches viewers how to say “My pen is pink” in Spanish. 

Earlier this week, ahead of the movie’s theatrical release, Duolingo teased the pre-show ad with a TikTok video showing additional footage from the video shoot and on-screen text reading “this is an easter egg.” Hundreds of users excitedly commented on the video asking if they would get a glimpse of Duo in the film, though the owl simply responded to their queries with emoji.

The spot will air ahead of the “Barbie” movie in theaters nationwide for the first two weeks of the movie's theatrical run, Kuczynski said. Duolingo is also exploring bringing the spot to theaters internationally, including in the U.K. And in the coming days, the team will share the video spot on social media to appeal to Duo’s loyal fans, particularly on TikTok, he added. 

“Our strategy for social is working, we’re building Duo as a persona, as a kind of influencer or creator in and of himself,” Kuczynski said. “We’re starting to see that having Duo show up in these really key moments is able to generate a lot of brand love for us.”