Duolingo killed their mascot, Duo, then brought it back to life. This was all part of a huge marketing stunt that was most likely just to garner more attention for their app, Duolingo. Duolingo is not the first (or the last) modern company to pull a stunt like this. Looking back, you cannot help but wonder if Generation Z is in charge of marketing now, how much wackier can it really get?
Rest in peace, Duo the Duolingo bird
The marketing stunt started on Feb. 11, 2025, when Duolingo posted a statement on TikTok announcing the death of the beloved Duolingo owl named Duo. The company later put a statement out on X that was the exact same thing. Fans were shocked and confused as to what was even going on. The TikTok account continued to post with other mascots.
DuoLingo Statement of X
Eventually, the company decided to post the cause of death for Duo. On Feb. 12 they posted “security footage of the cause of death” where Duo was hit with a Tesla Cyber Truck. The antics continued with the company posting several other TikTok's surrounding the owl's death, even killing off their other mascots. All of this accumulated on Feb. 22, when they finally announced that the Duolingo bird was actually not dead.
“Y’all really think I’d let a Cybertruck take me out?” the company said in a Tiktok posted the same day. “Legends never die.”
From there, the company went back to posting their usual content. But that is the thing with Duolingo: their content has never been normal. Pretty much since the app's creation, Duolingo has been known for hopping on the latest memes and trends on pretty much every social media. But what is the reason for this?
Generation Z and marketing
To put it plain and simple, Generation Z is the next level of consumer. Companies nowadays are getting involved with memes and trends to help improve sales. According to Forbes business analyst Craig Corbett, Gen Z now makes up for a quarter of the workforce and, because of that, it is important to make sure that they are being appropriately advertised to.
“As more of this demographic reaches working age, their influence on corporate standards will hold more weight. They will also increasingly be responsible for company purchasing decisions,” Corbett said.
Companies have to keep up with the fickle minds of the Gen Z demographic. You can see companies starting to try to get the younger demographic as far back as 2016. One of the first companies to really try and do this (and kind of succeed) is Wendy's on X.
Wendy's was known for “roasting” people all the way back in 2016. It would be a trend to comment on Wendy's Twitter (now X) page and try to get them to respond with something mean and, for a while, they were known as the meanest fast food restaurant, and many tried to copy them. Now, if you were to go on their X, they still post meme-like content, but seeing as how it is no longer cool to roast people the way they were, they do not do it as much.
Lionsgate and Norm of The North
The film studio Lionsgate was first founded in 1997 and has made many movies since. One of those movies being Norm of the North.
Norm of the North is a children's movie franchise with the first movie coming out in 2016. To promote the family friendly film, Lionsgate made a separate X page just for the movie. When the movie came out it was known as one of the worst children's movies to have come out in a decade but somehow got two straight-to-video sequels.
As the series went on, the post on the Norm of the North X page stayed pretty much family friendly until the last movie. On May 3, 2021, the film franchise posted on X claiming that Norm was ready. No one really knew what this meant, but they assumed that it was another movie announcement. They were wrong.
Their account spiraled into chaos as it quickly became a meme page with not-so family friendly memes. Some were tame like a post advertising used Norm of the North socks. Others were very raunchy, including a movie themed word search with the word “porn” intentionally in it.
The posting continued of this type of content continued until 2022 when the person who ran the account announced that Lionsgate had fired them years ago and they still had access to the account; they claim that they got a call from Lionsgate and it was over.
This of course was until 2024, when they went back to posting meme-like content. The difference is it was not as raunchy as it was before. The account even celebrated Duolingo dying.
This entire situation left people baffled. A family-friendly kids movie was posting crazy things, and it left people wondering if the parent company knew. If you were to follow the narrative set forth by the account, it would seem that Lionsgate was mad. But if you were to actually look at the Lionsgate accounts, they post very similar things about all of their movies.
One example of a campaign that got “Norm of the North” treatment is the promotion for Saw X. Saw is a horror movie franchise that first started in 2004. The movie is about the Jigsaw killer that kidnaps and traps people in situations where they have to fight for their lives.
The latest Saw movie came out in 2023, almost 10 years after the last instalment. For the roll out of this movie they did the normal horror movie promotion everywhere. Well, everywhere except TikTok.
TikTok got several meme-like videos surrounding the movie. For example, where X got a spooky video, TikTok got a goofy edit of John Kramer, the Jigsaw killer in the movie, which Billy are you quizzes and memes about the online game Webkinz filled their page.
Upon further inspection, all of their TikToks for their movies are like this, including Twilight and Hunger Games. If you were to stumble upon the page, you would not be able to tell that this is an official TikTok page for a multimillion dollar movie production company.
This just goes to show the power of the Gen Z dollar. These advertisements are changing and evolving with the times and becoming so much more than advertisements.
