Katherine Chan is Duolingo’s world head of social media, answerable for the outrageous social media stunts that make Duolingo a family title, and construct model affinity for its mischievous inexperienced owl mascot, Duo.

On Tuesday, April 9, from 2:25 to 2:50 PM EDT, Chan will seem on a Foremost Stage panel at ADWEEK’s Social Media Week occasion in New York. Lindsay Kennedy, vice chairman of shopper service on the company DEPT, will be a part of Chan and ADWEEK government editor Jameson Fleming on stage to debate social listening techniques, and utilizing them to take care of cultural relevance. Chan’s newest standout work for Duolingo features a five-second regional Tremendous Bowl spot by which Duo’s derriere explodes to the acquainted Duolingo chime, revealing one other inexperienced owl appended to Duo’s bottom; and Duolingo on Ice, an April Idiot’s Day social media spoof on over-the-top leisure like Disney On Ice.

Forward of Chan’s Social Media Week session, try ADWEEK’s interview along with her. She digs into her maniacal marketing campaign technique and what social listening has to do with it.

This interview has been frivolously edited for size and readability.

Are you able to tease what you’ll discuss on stage subsequent week?

I’m enthusiastic about this subject. It’s fairly core to what Duolingo does. We name our complete advertising technique, very a lot, social-first. That implies that we’re listening to our group, and focusing a number of our largest funding campaigns on what we all know resonates with our viewers and constructing the lore of our model, which is one thing that we create with our followers. One factor that’s distinctive about Duo, our mascot character that individuals know, love and concern, is that he began, no less than by way of our model, as a meme that our learners made.

We had been recognized years in the past for our notification technique of Duo reminding you to do your every day classes. Folks took this [concept] and ran with it on the web. Now we’ve made {that a} fairly core a part of our persona, and that already began with social listening.

I additionally am wanting ahead to speaking about a few of our larger campaigns and the way these drew from social insights. One current one [was] our Tremendous Bowl spot, which was a five-second spot of Duo farting out himself. That got here from an perception that we noticed with our widgets. So now we have a widget you may set up in your telephone the place the pictures of Duo shuffle via and remind you to do your lesson all through the day. One of many photographs that went probably the most viral on social was a picture of Duo popping out of Duo. It began with the widget picture.