Online language-learning platform Duolingo has launched metaverse activations across Roblox and Decentraland to remind people to complete their language lessons.
By tapping into to the long-running Duolingo owl ‘meme’, a running gag where the brand’s iconic mascot chases down users who are yet to complete their lessons across a range of unexpected moments and location, the platform will hope to capitalise on its growing cultural presence across the Roblox metaverse.
Capitalising on its growing viral success, Duolingo has also launched a game jam within Roblox, which enables users to develop games featuring the platform’s famous mascot.
Dutch agency Media Monks has facilitated Duolingo’s operations across the Roblox platform, which offers access to millions of potential users who have yet to learn a second language.
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Duolingo owl memes were born when the platform put out a 2019 April Fool’s tweet reading “It’s simple, spanish [sic] or vanish”, since then memes surrounding the so-called ‘killer owl’ have snowballed – making the brand into an online cultural phenomenon, especially among under 25s.
“Duolingo’s mission is really about making the best education world and making it universally available. That usually means connecting with new audiences, ones that we haven’t reached yet or connected with,” Duolingo creative director, James Kuczynski said.
“We wanted to take this love that we’ve already seen and amplify that by jumping into the space and creating our own our own activation.”
He added: “We thought this would be an innovative way to give us a cool factor among this audience, so that when potentially Duolingo does come up for them to experience, there’s this inherent notion of, ‘Oh, I know about them.”
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