Duolingo in NYFW 2026
The AdWeek article “ Duolingo Creates a Fashion Line for the Brands You Can’t Pronounce” by Katie Duffy discusses a marketing campaign from Duolingo during this years New York Fashion Week. Duolingo is a popular language learning app most known for its free mobile lessons as well as humorous online social media presence. Instead of creating a typical advertising campaign highlighting the apps strengths and language learning abilities, the brand decided to launch a limited fashion collection titles “The Phonetic Collection” which taught viewers how to pronounce high end designer brand names. I thought this campaign was extremely original because it connected education with fashion and creativity while at the same time opened it’s services to a new industry gaining attention from consumers that might not have heard or cared about the company before. Another takeaway from the article is the use of humor and an interactive experience to have online consumers as well as the audience to engage in their brand with a shared experience watching the show. Lastly, Duolingo used relatability to connect with the audience without having to sell their brand or product to you.
Duolingo’s Value Proposition is to make education convenient, accessible, and engaging. The convenience is right there in your back pocket, and affordability makes the app accessible to almost anyone. The idea is that learning a new language shouldn’t be intimidating or need to be expensive. The app uses short lessons and reward like incentives to keep users motivated and practicing regularly. Their Value Proposition is heavily reflected in this campaign by turning something that might make people feel embarrassed, mispronouncing a word, and making it something you can laugh and learn from. It’s keeping its lighthearted and friendly identity to their audience.
New York Fashion week was an opportunity for the brand to expand to various marketing channels to relay their brands message, an example of integrated marketing communications By creating a fashion line which is typically outside of the brands expertise, they attracted influencers, designers, celebrities, and fashion consumers to become more aware of their brand. NYFW is also a highly broadcasted on social media, posted in news articles, and reshared by millions of viewers which creates excessive exposure in a new consumer market.
Similar to many other online companies as the internet continues to become more and more accessible, Duolingo struggles standing out in an overly saturated market. There are many other online platforms for language learning, as well as virtual or in person college courses, books, and media to help consumers learn a second language. Duolingo has a known social media presence for creating funny videos and engaging in other brands using their green owl mascot to appeal to viewers. This however, cannot continue to be reliable for form of advertising without new creative ideas to promote the brand on social media.
I think this was an extremely creative and positive campaign. It caused a lot of discussion in the media. A lot of people were reposting about it and making videos with their own opinion of the campaign, and I’ve seen a lot of positive feedback. I also applaud the riskiness of this type of advertising because a lot of money and time and effort from everyone involved was put into making this campaign successful while risking the chance that it could have gotten a little to no attention. Duolingo is a very widely known brand, however in the fashion world there was no telling how many people would relate to the campaign or understand the message behind it. One thing I feel like the brand could done better is shedding more light on what their company does better than others and what they can offer to consumers. I would say the campaign was successful because of the attention it put on Duolingo and creating relevance in the media since the brand has been pretty MIA on social media, however, that does not mean that there was a spike in downloads or more money coming into the company. If I was working for this project, I might have done more advertisement on site of New York Fashion Week. Alongside fashion professionals, models, and designers, there were a lot of people coming to watch the shows and experience fashion culture that the app could’ve been sold to. Having a booth to talk about what the company does, Or creating interactive games for people walking by to create attention, like spinning a wheel or winning prizes would stay on theme To Duolingo’s value proposition and create a environment.
https://www.adweek.com/creativity/duolingo-creates-a-fashion-line-for-the-brands-you-cant-pronounce/
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