the horny duolingo bird lives: zaria parvez

Where do you go from pivoting your brand to nihilism? Horny, my friends. WILDLY horny. In our final installment of the Sentient Horny Brand series, Jamie speaks to the mind behind Duolingo’s chaotic, wildly horny social media presence Zaria Parvez. Remember when you couldn’t get the owl giving birth to sponges off your feed? Remember when you didn’t even WANT to? That was her, and getting there was a wild ride.
We talk about her journey from nearly taking down a Christian school to changing the way that Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumes advertising, one shitpost at a time. 

Follow Zaria here: 
https://www.instagram.com/zariaparvez

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Story Stay ECUA.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Six six. Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where

(00:58):
we take a look at the Internet's characters, see how
their moment affected them and what that says about us
and the Internet. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus, and today
after a saga that took us all the way back
to the turn of the twentieth century in American marketing
and up to literally last week, this is the fourth

(01:19):
and final installment in our sentient Brands that sometimes get
too violent or horny series. So just to start, if
you haven't listened to our first several parts, please.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Go do that.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
And if you're joining us again, congratulations you have made
it to the duo lingo this OWL episode. Hopefully that's
thrilling for you. Now. When we left off in our
last episode, we spoke with Nathan Alibach of the nihilist
Stakum's account and we began to inch ever closer toward

(01:55):
the present. But while Nathan still works in marketing, as
do Amy Brown of Wendy's Twitter Rosemaster Fame, neither are
still posting on the accounts that they initially made famous.
Today that changes my interview for the final part of
this series is with someone who I've received potentially a

(02:18):
weird amount of requests for. Her name is Zaria Parvez,
but you probably know her as the duo lingo owl
on TikTok. It is not Zaria in the owl suit,
at least not usually. Usually it's some guy named Mark.
I got the exclusive Keep listening. But before we can
explore how Zaria Parvez, a recent college graduate, went from

(02:43):
suggesting that the inoffensive green owl mascot of a free
language learning app become extremely horny and virtually grow the
company single handedly, let's return to the two marketing roads
diverging in a wood we were talking about in our
last episode, Ian get the music going. Okay, here we

(03:09):
are in the wood. We've explored nihilism as a marketing
tactic now through Nathan Allabach's time running social media for Stakum,
and we discussed his feelings on running the account now
all these years later. So today we're taking a turn
into what was until five or so years ago, the

(03:31):
final frontier of selling product to a logged in Internet
person being weirdly horn I want to explain being horny
to you. You know it when you see it, when
you feel it, you little pervert. But as far as
social media marketing goes, being horny as a brand really

(03:56):
came alive in the late twenty tens and experienced a
somewhat unsettling uptick in the early twenty twenties. And wouldn't
you know it, Nathan Alibach carefully tracked and published a
short history that marked this turn from anxiety and nihilism

(04:16):
in social media advertising being the flavor of the month
to the owl that fucks. He published this in Vulture
in twenty twenty two. It's a piece called When Brands
Got Horny, and I've linked it in the description. So
to give you an idea of what I mean by
horny brands, consider where we're coming from here, where Amy

(04:37):
Brown at Wendy Twitter tapped into a propensity for violence.
Nathan and Stakham subsequently appealed to anxiety and depression on
social media at the time, although because it hasn't come
up yet, I will say that no one took advantage
of depression more directly, although I do believe it was
taken out of context mid thread than the fake orange

(05:00):
juice brand Sunny D in February twenty nineteen.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Saying I can't do this anymore.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
This still makes me laugh. I'm sorry, but at this
point a tweet like this would prompt a reaction from
other brands that was well received but kind of expected.
At this point, Moonpies replies to sunny D, asking if
they're okay, Pop Tart offers sunny D a hug. You
get the idea. Even the official account of Satan, Blue,

(05:29):
Check and Everything.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
Replied, I feel you, sunny D, my friend.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
We have to keep moving. And while there were some
horny accounts earlier in the decade, it was mostly because
being a horny was what actually made sense for that company.
Think the porn Hub Twitter account. But in the back
half of the twenty tens, it seems like the success
of the fifty Shades of Gray franchise sort of emboldened

(05:56):
some social media managers to get a little kink.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
Here.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
From the same week that sunny D threatened suicide, the gigantic,
multi billion dollar company Verizon tweeted the following.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yes, T Mobile, We're into BDSM, bigger coverage map, devastating
speed and massive capacity.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Verizon is a terrible company and yet I am laughing
at that. The other examples Nathan Ahlabach uses in his
piece are photoshops or quote tweeted replies to horny contents
from brands like Jimmy John's and the mixtape dropping grocery
store brand itself Hamburger Helper in twenty seventeen. But it's

(06:38):
the next year that Nathan identifies that being horny on
Maine and yes, I do feel quite old saying that,
but being horny unmean is now culturally acceptable, which means
that more brand accounts are willing to do it. And
this is a very long way of saying that twenty

(06:58):
eighteen was the year that it became popular for brands
to participate in no Nut November. I quit, I quit
my job just getting Here's a tweet from Burger King
on November one, twenty eighteen, him it's only a month
wif fu crying emoji, and Burger King follows us up

(07:21):
with welcome to King Burger, where we can do it
your way, but don't get crazy. Okay, this month is
so unpleasant. Next, corn Nuts spells out the word nut
in nut emojis. Mister Peanuts. Social media says that you
can eat him in November because he's technically a lagome.

(07:43):
You can see how this fanned out. Nutter Butter obviously
got in on this, really name a nut based product
with a Twitter account, and they were engaging with no
Nut November twenty eighteen. But I will say that corn
Nuts did take the cake because they just at one
point posted what is the craziest place you've nutted enough?

(08:05):
Another successful account posting horny stuff was Netflix in the
late twenty tens, And keep in mind this was when
Netflix was much better thought of in the public sphere
than it is today and was still sort of considered
to be a place to find generally good TV and
wasn't yet bleeding subscribers. But what's interesting here is that

(08:27):
Netflix social media accounts for multiple countries. We're posting horny
tweets to the point where it's safe to assume that
this was a globally mandated media strategy.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
We're seeing post like one time, babe doing a step
on me and it was awesome, what's something you.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
Can say during sex? But also when you manage a
brand Twitter account, And in most detail, to line up
with the release of that Zach Effron Ted Bundy movie,
I've seen a.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
Lot of talk about Ted Bundy's alleged hotness and would
like to gently remind everyone that there are literally thousands
of hot men on the service, almost all of whom
are not convicted serial murderers.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
You get the idea. By early twenty twenty, Arbi's had
created their own WIFU character, and by the time the
pandemic lockdown happened, Nathan Alibach Crace's accounts like this, moving
into a more blue Ball's horny style of content. So
by this logic, we were to believe, as social media

(09:30):
consumers that the brands were sitting at home along with
millions of other people not having sex. By twenty twenty one,
horny brands have been fully normalized. I'm talking weird posts
of build a Bears and silk robes called build a
Bear after Dark. I'm talking KFC's Twitter posting jacked Colonel

(09:54):
Sanders fanart without any comment, and even Denny's Parkening back
to our first episode in this series comes full circle
and pulls from the IHOB playbook, briefly rebranding itself as
Wait for It, Daddies, and It's here we arrive at
the duo Lingo owl horny saga that has since evolved

(10:18):
into multiple story arcs, and most recently, a pivot back
to violence when the green owl Duo Lingo mascot named
Duo was quote unquote hit by a cyber truck and killed.
And all of this happened just as I started working
on this series in early February twenty twenty five. And yes,

(10:41):
because it is twenty twenty five, Duo Lingo immediately had
merch to launch their dead mascot.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
With twenty twenty five has got us all knocked down.
But not to worry. Where monetizing grief because we are
in corporation.

Speaker 4 (10:54):
For the low price of twenty nine ninety nine, you
could prove you really love Duo and friends with the
customs cop.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
I mean, you got to hand it to them, monetizing grief.
Who do they think they are? Me and every comedian
I've ever met. But none of this would be possible
without the Duo Lingo head of social Media, Zaria Parvez,
who moved from Portland, Oregon to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, shortly after
graduating college to start working at Duo Lingo, and whose

(11:24):
energy and enthusiasm and frankly just being a longtime poster
brought the company to New heights and escalated all the
way to showing Duo the Owl's little ass cheeks during
a Super Bowl commercial. And because we did an ethics

(11:45):
check in our last episode to see how closely the
business practices of Stakhum aligned with Nathan's progressive social media campaign,
I'm going to take this chance to do a quick
look at the product that the unhinged energy of Zaria's
interpretation of Duo the Owl. So let's take a look

(12:05):
at Duo Lingo. Honestly, after looking at this for a while,
I think Zaria Parvez has it a little bit easier
than anyone else I've talked to during this series, really,
just because she is not hawking processed meat. Instead, it's
her job to try and engage younger audiences online into
learning a second language on their phone. It is a

(12:27):
comparatively wholesome mission, and the company itself has been mostly
without scandal. And I say mostly because like many longtime
successful apps, there has been an increased reliance on AI
from Duo Lingo that's given them the excuse to lay
off much of its workforce. And we can assume using

(12:49):
AI has had a tremendously negative impact on the environment.
No company without sin, but Duo Lingo was founded in
twenty eleven by two twenty some things. As these businesses
tend to be founded by a guy named Lewis van
On and the bone chillingly named Severin Hacker. Imagine knowing

(13:11):
a guy with that name. So while the AI controversy
is entirely bullshit, and from what I can tell, the
founders have been very evasive about it as far as
an app that inevitably collects user data goes, NordVPN recently
said that Duo Lingo is a relatively safe app to use.
Sure they've had data breaches before, but not more than

(13:34):
your average app. I actually used Duolingo myself for a
while during the summer of twenty nineteen after I saw
the movie Midsummar and decided, Hey, Jamie, what if you
learned Swedish so you can Midsummar. I'm not sure what
the thinking was there, and it was really vulnerable of
me to tell you that, because since the twenty twenty lockdown,

(13:57):
Duolingo membership with both pay and free account options has
continued to increase. It's a very successful app, and Zaria
Parvez explains in our interview that She chose to go
to Duo Lingo over other marketing jobs because of its mission.
She wanted to work for a company whose mission she

(14:18):
believed in and a workplace that was likely to be
more diverse. Because being Pakistani American, she very often found
herself being the only non white person in the room
and hoped that a company with a multicultural mission stood
to be a little bit different. So Zaria comes aboard
to Duolingo. In twenty twenty a terrible time to be

(14:40):
a person, much less a recent college graduate, but as
we just revisited, a sort of darkly advantageous time to
be a social media marketer. Speaking in the most cynical
terms possible, you weren't likely to find a more captive
audience than twenty twenty, and learning a lot language mostly

(15:01):
for free seemed to many like a less nihilistic way
to spend one's time. But even with that considered, prior
to early twenty twenty one, Duo Lingo wasn't really known
for its social media presence, even though, as we just
talked about, Horny Brand's strategy on social media had already

(15:21):
reached its peak at this time, at least over on Twitter.
So while Zaria didn't invent this style, she has essentially
perfected it because, as any convincing social media marketer does,
I've gleaned at this point, she's made her own playbook
and posted what she actually thought was funny authenticity. It's

(15:44):
the thing that all advertisers are going for, and so
few actually accomplish. Okay. Early twenty twenty one, Zaria Parvez
has yet to take the lead on Duo Lingo's social media,
but has been at the company for about a year
at this point, and Duo Lingo at this time is
running a pretty dry social strategy, and for the purposes

(16:07):
of this episode, I'm going to focus on TikTok, where
they've had the most success at this time. The plan
was ostensibly to pay existing TikTok influencers to collaborate with
the brand and talk about the languages that they were
learning in order to get their fans to sign up
for the app. You've seen stuff like this before. It's
nothing particularly edgy, but the posts you're cute.

Speaker 5 (16:30):
Did you know that?

Speaker 6 (16:31):
In Dutch there is the saying new compt de app
out the mau, which means now the monkey comes out
a sleeve.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
New compt de app out.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
The mau is used when something is revealed that was
previously secret.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
However, the posts were also underperforming, and per Azaria in
our interview, the company didn't think it was worth the
fees of the influencers to continue it, and instead of
thinking of a new strategy, Duo Lingo very nearly deprioritized
TikTok marketing entirely, and Zaria, an avid TikTok fan herself,

(17:06):
disagreed with this and asked for the chance to just
chase a few trends on the app. And almost immediately
this approach blew up, in no small part thanks to
a mascot suit of Duo, the Green Owl, that Zaria
found hanging around the office luring at everybody. The first

(17:28):
video that blows up is one of Zaria herself, because
in the beginning she appeared in these videos pretty regularly.
She's sitting at a desk in the Duo Lingo offices
with the creepy empty owl mascot suit sitting behind her,
with trending audio playing. How am I supposed to live
laugh love in these conditions? And in part because of

(17:51):
the weirdness of it, and in part because of using
that trending audio, this TikTok blows up and before you
know but Zaria is on a roll. She asks a
coworker to jump into the duo owl suit that's Mark,
and within a couple of weeks, the TikTok account had

(18:11):
fully pivoted to using Duo as a sometimes menacing, sometimes
vaguely horny tool to remind people on TikTok to do
their daily duo lingo or to sign up and start
learning a language if they hadn't already. Now, if you
haven't used duo Lingo before, this probably sounds weird and circuitous,

(18:35):
but if you have, it's no surprise that Zaria's strategy,
which was both very intentional and really fun for her
to do, worked really well because the way that she
was anthropomorphizing Duo the Owl was very similar to the
way that fans of Duo Lingo had been making popular

(18:55):
memes about that same character for years. The difference was that,
prior to Zaria taking on this role at the front
of social media, the company had never interacted with these
very popular memes. So while it might sound out of
nowhere that Zaria having a static image of the Duo

(19:17):
mascot suit in the office with her eyes, mouth and
voice lip syncing to audio like this.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
Uh oh oh, I know what the consequences of my actions.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
You know it's your boy, and I just want to
apologize here because I know how painful it is for
people to explain tiktoks to you. Just ask your most
annoying friend. But the comments that Duo or Zaria was
replying to here all had to do with Duo Lingo
streaks or basically, did you use Duo Lingo today to

(19:54):
preserve your however many day long streak of learning whichever language.
It's a big incentive of using the app and always
had been so. Users had made a ton of memes
of the reminder push notifications that Duo Lingo would often
send its users to remind them to do their daily

(20:14):
lessons or lose their streak, and these notifications were presented
somewhat menacingly by the supposedly friendly Duo the owl, and
this led to the user generated meme Evil Duo Lingo Owl,
a photoshop version of Duo holding a gun and saying

(20:36):
something like the Duo Lingo owl when you haven't practiced
in two days. It was pretty funny and it became
a meme format for other stuff. But this meme became
popular among Duo Lingo users all the way back in
twenty seventeen. I can confirm this because it definitely existed

(20:57):
the summer that I failed to learn how to introduced
myself in Swedish. But it took four full years until
twenty twenty one for the Duo Lingo company via Zaria,
to embrace this ethos as their mascot's actual personality. So again,

(21:18):
Zaria is using raw material that was already there. Where
social media managers like Amy Brown or Nathan Alabach had
to create a personality for a legacy company, Zaria Parvez
is taking existing memes and using her own creativity to
amplify it for a relatively young company, and she gets

(21:40):
a lot of support internally to do this. Zaria was
in her early twenties when this began and was basically
given free reign to turn Duo the Owl into a
mascot suited TikTok sitcom agent of chaos, and, as she
explains in our interview, the account's ever climbing presence seemed

(22:00):
to boost user retention and daily use on the app itself,
particularly among young people, because keep in mind that in
the early twenty twenties, the vast majority of TikTok users
were still teenagers and people in their early to mid twenties,
and so particularly in twenty twenty one, to do well

(22:21):
on TikTok was to uniquely corner a market of young people,
and these young people on TikTok, from what at least
initial conventional studies have reflected, were more willing to interact
with a brand account on social media than the millennials
and particularly gen Z Internet users of your were. And

(22:44):
we've traced this throughout this series because even when a
brand was attempting to act authentically even ten years earlier,
you would very frequently see the comments flooded with silence
brand memes. But by the time Zo Maria Parvez is
acting as Duo the Owl, if a brand was coming
off as authentically online seeming, there were very few calls

(23:09):
of this nature. Because Duo was playing knowingly into a
then four year old, originally fan made meme and represented
an ostensibly wholesome company, most young users didn't seem to
really have a problem with it. And another big difference
was that these young users seemed well aware that the

(23:30):
account was being run by one of them, making it
easier to play into the fun. Going back to the
character of Duo of the Owl, when Duo was characterized
as violent, it was a brand focused kind of violent.
He was willing to kill in order to keep Duo
Lingo users' streaks going, and so in the early days

(23:53):
of the account's virality, the shorthand for this was Spanish
or Vanish, and the followers of the Duol account loved
this and interacted with it very, very frequently, which only
boosted its engagement in the algorithm. When the Duo Lingo
account posted a vague threat to keep its members on
their streaks, commenters would jokingly beg for their lives. Here

(24:16):
are a few examples.

Speaker 6 (24:18):
Duo, it's the FBI release the families don't feel like
it thinks, so Duo watches over my lessons more than
the FBI watches over the most wanted criminals.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Duo, it's hard being a single mom who works two
jobs and the survive. But Zaria also switches things up
every so often so that no one approach lasts long
enough to burn out fans of the account, and that
was hard on an Internet trend cycle that kept moving

(24:51):
faster and faster. But I know why you're here. You're
here to hear about the horny posts. So for your purposes,
two things stand out. Not because Duo the Owl was
the first to be a horny anthropomorphized character for from it,
but Duo certainly went the furthest that a prominent brand

(25:12):
had gone to this point. One we'll discuss in more
detail in our interview, which was a collaboration between Duo
Lingo and Fellow Down for whatever style social media brand
scrub Daddy, which is a sponge company that genders sponges.
I have a scrub mommy in my sink right now.

(25:34):
No time we talk about it in the interview, but
the two social media teams met up, and long story short,
Duo Lingo and scrub Daddy decided to make it seem
as if their two mascots had a baby together. I
promised this will be the last very scary thing I
described in this episode. So as this music is playing,

(25:57):
it's accompanied by a slideshow of pictures of the scrub
Daddy anthropomorphic sponge character holding Duo the Owl's shoulders as
the Owl literally gives birth to owl shaped sponges at
what cost? At what cost? And keep in mind this
is fairly recent in social media history, so after the

(26:20):
fall of the clickbait marketing zenith, years of BuzzFeed, Mashable,
you name it. So if you want to go viral
as a brand, now it's up to employees to capture
the interests of users directly, not a random underpaid writer
beholden to posting twenty clickbait pieces a day, and in

(26:42):
order to do that, you need to do more. You
can't just be horny. You have to be the horniest
brand that's ever existed. The other example in Duo Lingo's case,
which sort of served as a story arc, was Duo
the Owls crush on Dua Lipa. Don't overthink it. The

(27:05):
name sounds similar, and because TikTok is run by an opaque,
uncannily people pleasing algorithm, a TikTok using trending audio that
featured the photo of a current celebrity like Dua Lipa
was bound to have a good start in the algorithm
in terms of gaining subtraction, but it wasn't enough, and
the Duo Lingo account escalated most memorably when they posted

(27:30):
Duo photoshopped with Zaria's eyes and mouth onto Duo in
a public pool, asking ew who pete.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
In the pool?

Speaker 1 (27:40):
Cut two a photo of Dua Lipa on the red carpet,
captioned sorry it was me. Cut two Duo the Owl
photoshopped as a mermaid swimming underwater, swimming in hot Girl piss.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yay, we did it.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
You listen to this series for three hours just so
you could get to do a leapus piss. You could
just watch porn. The wild thing here is that even
when the approach seems deeply unhinged on Duo Lingo's behalf,
Zaria is one of the few social media managers that

(28:21):
can prove her approach leads to user retention. Data bears
this out, but there is also proof from the comments
in these same horny posts from Reddit after the Piss TikTok.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
Honestly, every time Duo shows up on my for you page,
I log and do my owl homework for the day,
so it seems like they're doing something right. Do aleapap
jokes be damned.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
The Duo Lingo TikTok account hits a million followers in
late twenty twenty one and now boasts nearly seventeen million followers,
and none of this would have happened with the old
vagaries of the influence overlap attempt that existed when Zaria
began working there. Not only did other young TikTokers love

(29:07):
the way that Duo interacted with trends, but they also
clearly understood that behind this account was a social media
manager working hard and hopefully having fun. A comment from
twenty twenty two bears this out.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
If they fire you, I will never duoh another lingo
and I literally have a one hundred and fifty nine
day streak because of this account.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
And this also indicates a pretty significant generational shift from
the time that we began covering this series. Our first
interview was with Serenity Disco, who, when acting as Denny's
on Twitter and Tumbler, had some Internet users recognize that
they were a middle class person operating the account, but

(29:54):
it wasn't assumed that they were. The way it is
now where Zaria was and is catering to multiple generations
of online users, and what seems indisputable based on available research,
is that millennials were more willing to engage with targeted
ads than Gen X, Gen Z was more willing to

(30:14):
engage with targeted ads than millennials, and now Gen alpha
is more willing to engage with targeted ads than Gen Z. Terrifying. Yeah,
I'm still constantly pursing out how young people are both
uniquely attuned to the ways in which capitalism is dismantling
their lives and are willing to engage with it when

(30:36):
it's fun. But I'm no better. Gen X is the same,
Gen Alpha is the same. And while I do believe
that the children are our future, blah blah blah, the
children are being raised by algorithms are generation made, and
we don't know what we're doing, so it's a cycle
that is bound to continue repeating. Okay, we're talking about

(31:01):
the horny owl. By twenty twenty four, Duo Lingo was
horny posting during Super Bowl ads, playing the following commercial
and just try to guess what's happening based on the sound. Okay,
you win one hundred dollars if you knew that was
duo the owls but inflating until it popped into a

(31:25):
second Duo the Owl and then just the words do
your duo Lingo. While Zaria did not conceive this commercial directly.
She made this possible, and as time passed, Zaria was
given the funding to build out her own team and
work with other ad agencies to build her vision for
Duo to factor directly into the app itself. More recently,

(31:49):
when a social media campaign with Duo is rolled out,
it's reflected in the logo of the app. So if
Duo is sick on TikTok, Duo is sick on the
Dual Lingo app, and you can't really lose if you're
the company here, because even if a user does not
engage with the brand online, seeing an icon that's normally

(32:12):
a smiling owl suddenly being a vomiting owl might make
you stop in your tracks and remember to practice Spanish again.
Most recently, as I mentioned earlier, this resulted in a
stunt that had Duo the Owl and all the other
expanded universe Duo Lingo characters murdered by a cyber truck,

(32:40):
which got mainstream attention. That's genuinely hard to pull off
these days when so many clickbait aggregators have fallen or
pivoted to Nazism. I mean, Dua Lipa herself mourned Duo
the Owl just a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 5 (32:57):
Duo the Owl is dead and pop star Dual is responding.
On February eleventh, the language learning app Duolingo announced their mascot,
Duo the Owl, was fatally hit by a Tesla cybertruck.
In a statement, the app wrote, tbh, he probably died
waiting for you to do your lesson, but what do
we know. Duo Lingo also encouraged users to share their

(33:18):
credit card numbers in the comments, adding at the end,
we appreciate you respecting do Alipa's privacy at this time,
and now do a Lipa is responding on X with
her own words of mourning, writing till death Duo part,
adding a broken heart.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Emoji and if killing the mascot sounds familiar, it's because
this kind of mirrors the nut Alert Mister Peanut death
stunt of twenty twenty. There was also a Super Bowl
commercial for this, complete with the kool Aid man's tears
fertilizing the ground and growing a baby. Mister Peanut.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
Mister Peanut, he spent his life bringing people together.

Speaker 5 (33:56):
I know he'd be happy that we all hit together.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Thankfully. Dual Lingo changes course quickly after killing off Duo
the Owl and instead of doing a weird commercial, instead
cross promoted between marketing and the Duo Lingo app itself
to quote bring Duo back to life. This meant having
users engage with the app in order to do so,

(34:24):
and two weeks and a shitload of press later, Duo
the Owl was back to normal. And that amount of
cooperation across departments and a company is pretty unique by
today's standards. So enough, horny setup, change your underwear. Let's
hear it from the Green Owl's proxy herself. Up next,

(34:47):
my conversation with Zaria Parves. Welcome back to sixteenth minute.
I just wanted to take a moment to say I

(35:08):
really appreciated the thread on the sixteenth minute reddit board
from last week asking politely if I farted during the
interview last week. And sorry to disappoint, but I am
pretty sure that was a glitch on Apple podcasts. A
likely story, I know. Anyways, here's my interview with Dual

(35:29):
Lingo's own, Zaria Parvez. This interview has been edited for
time and clarity.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah. Hi, my name is Zaria.

Speaker 4 (35:37):
I'm the global Senior Social Media Manager at due Lingo
and I've been here for about five years. I handle
all of our content with my amazing content team that
you see on our TikTok our Instagram or YouTube.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
So really just in it and the weeds with social
at due Lingo.

Speaker 4 (35:53):
What a lot of people don't know is actually Duelingo
is my first job out of college. Yeah, so I
did not job before this, which is kind of crazy,
But I grew up in Portland to Oregon and I
attended University of Oregon. I studied marketing there and my
focus was actually brand strategy. Then the pandemic came around
and I graduated, so I was like a twenty twenty

(36:14):
grad and I knew I wanted a job in marketing,
but I was seeing what was out there, and I think, like,
for me, like my biggest thing is I really wanted
to be like I always say, I work best in
the shadows and in the preiphery, So like I wanted
to be at a company that was kind of like
still starting up with like their marketing, they weren't like
number one in the game at the time, but also
like a company that had a good ethos. So like

(36:36):
that's kind of how I stumbled into like going to Pittsburgh,
I guess from Portland and like finding dueling go and
all of this was I just wanted to be at
a company that was like inherently diverse, and I thought, hey,
like a place that teaches languages sounds like a pretty
diverse place to be. And they had a social media
coordinator role open when I was starting, Like, I was
interested in marketing, but I didn't know it was social
and I was just more chasing the company versus the job.

(36:58):
And I was like, I'm new, I'll figured it out
and if it's for me, great, If not, we can
always pivot. But yeah, that's a little bit about me.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
I hope this sounds like the compliment is intended to be.
It makes so much sense that you're from Portland. It
just really clarifies a lot. That makes me feel good
because I miss organ every day. Well, in my experience
in college, they weren't teaching the internet correctly or well,
I'm curious, how did you get drawn to marketing and

(37:26):
how is it taught to you versus what the industry
ended up being.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
Like, that's such a cool question. I don't think I've
ever been asked that before. I actually was in pre med.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
I like every other Pakistani kid that I was going
to become a doctor and quickly learned one quarter in
that I am not going to chemistry and it wasn't
for me. But what I did really love about chemistry
in general was like writing the lab reports. Like that
for me was like, oh, this is fun, and like
especially the last part that's always like explain why this
matters in the world. And I think for me, like

(37:57):
that was kind of a moment where I was like, Okay,
I'm a writer, and like I'm failing my chem tests,
but I'm doing well on lab reports, so maybe there's
something here. And as people do in college, started exploring
other things and just seeing what was out there, and
advertising a university organ is huge because like White and
Kennedy Nike, it like all comes from organ so I

(38:18):
knew of it and I just like took one class
one quarter and absolutely was like, Yeah, this is what
I want to do.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
I can be creative and I can.

Speaker 4 (38:26):
Write, and I can create things and get paid fairly
well for it, So like, yeah, why would I not
do this? And at my heart and at my core
even now, I still think I'm a writer. Like writing
is my true joy, whether that's like comedy writing or
like little captions or like the punchy lines that you
see on Duo's tiktoks, or like long form marketing just
kind of became like my whole personality, which is kind

(38:47):
of cringe. But in college I was like part of
like our ad team and like went to nationals and like.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Created campaigns for like Wiener Schnitzel.

Speaker 4 (38:55):
And like Adobe, which is so random, very class president energy,
but I just really fell in love with it. I
loved the fact that it mixed art and science, and
I loved the fact that it was just like it
was just cool, like you could do cool things and
create cool stuff and see it out in the world.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
But they did not teach social media.

Speaker 4 (39:12):
Like going back and looking at these campaigns I made,
they were like, yeah, we'll activate maybe on TikTok, but
social was like not there. I think what helped me
stand out is I was just I loved it as
a consumer, Like I was just on social and I
always scared about my grids and how things looked, and
that also, I think is kind of what set us
up for success here at Duo in the sense where
like I was kind of entering this job as like

(39:36):
someone who just loves social media and like looking deeper
into it versus like an advertiser who specializes in social media,
Like it allowed me to not work as an advertiser
and generally they just work as like a creator, which
I think ultimately helped the brand because it allowed us
to not be so caught up on like advertising things.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
I do think it's interesting how little you were taught
about social media in your marketing class and now you
are quite literally at the top of social media marketing
because it wasn't necessarily what you learned at school. What
was your relationship with the internet like growing up, What
was your sort of flavor of being online growing up?

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (40:13):
So I mean I don't remember a life without an internet,
Like I feel like that's always been around me. And
then I think the funniest thing is I actually wasn't
allowed to have social media until I was a junior
in high school.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
So did you secretly have it?

Speaker 2 (40:27):
End? Absolutely yes.

Speaker 4 (40:29):
So my favorite story is actually, when I was in
third grade, YouTube was like the big thing, right, and
so I actually got suspended for making a YouTube video
that accidentally went viral and it was yeah, and it
was about why students shouldn't be attending my strict Catholic school,
and like I was like it was like, so like

(40:50):
don't come here because a bit, but for some reason,
it like blew up and I got called to the
principal's office and I remember this so well, and she's like,
in my dad was there, and my dad my mom
and dad both works, and like I always went to
like after school things like if my dad's there in
the middle of the day, I'm like, I'm WoT. Yeah,
I saw him and I was like, oh, but he

(41:11):
wasn't like Matt, Like he was just sitting there neutral,
So like, okay, what's going on? And our principals like,
so we know you have a YouTube channel and I
was like, oh god, Like I was more worried about
her saying that my dad getting mad. And she's like,
you had this one video and I was like what
are you taught? And I was like and it was
like such a nothing video to me, and she was
like it under your name, Yeah, it was under the
Mega Freakable.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
That was my Like okay.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
I was like what was the user?

Speaker 4 (41:33):
Yeah, okay, And she was like we have like we're
trying to fundraise for like this new school and like
this has blown up and it's inappropriate because you're like
bashing the school and the program whatever. And she's like,
because of this, like we'll be giving you like a
one day suspension. And my dad was like we were
just like okay, like it was really neutral, and I
was like, he's going to like give it to me
after we leave this meeting.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
We walk out and he's like, well, at least you
get a Monday off. And I was like, what is
going on? Literally, and he was like he's like, he's like,
I saw it.

Speaker 4 (42:03):
He's like, never make a YouTube video ever again and
delete your account, which happened, but he was like, I
don't see any problem with it. He's like, I'm glad
for you. I'm glad that you used your voice. And
I'm like, great, thank you. Oh oh yeah, that's so great.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
And that was in third grade.

Speaker 4 (42:17):
So I think like for me, like Duo's personality of
like being unhinged, being out of pocket, like it's just
kind of my personality in a way of like I've
always probably said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing,
and like working for a brand that has that persona
made it really easy. But yeah, that was just kind
of my my relationship with social has just been like
I've always just been on it and used it and

(42:38):
loved it.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
How does your relationship with social media kind of evolve
as you're growing up.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
I loved it, like I was always on it.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
I cared about my Like getting my Instagram my junior
year was like the biggest thing ever. I was like,
oh my god, I finally have an account. Loved Twitter,
had had the classic like mean girl Twitter moment with
like you know, your middle school enemies and like all
of that stuff. Going on social was like every part,
Like that was what I did my free time. And
it's like, I mean obviously other activities too, but like
social was just always part of my life, like it

(43:05):
was never That's why it was like never nothing. So
like when I saw this, I was like, yeah, I
could do social for a brand, Like how hard can
it be? Like I know, like content basics, I know
marketing basics, Like how hard can it be to bring
the expertise that I know personally with professional work, which
is a little naive but maybe I needed.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
That to have that confidence.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
So Okay, so you get this job right out of college?

Speaker 4 (43:25):
Yeah, so I was in Portland, but then I moved
on my own because I just wanted to move to
Pittsburgh in August of twenty twenty, but our office didn't
open until September of twenty twenty one, when like we
had people coming in and that's actually when our like
TikTok really took off. So like I was doing like
so like quote unquote boring social work for Duo too
for a year, Like I was just figuring out like

(43:46):
what it even means to be working a nine to
five and what corporate life is.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
How do people talk about duo online because I feel
like I've been seeing duo with the gun for years.

Speaker 4 (43:56):
Yes, when we started the memes exist, we did not
acknowledge them. Like it was very like brand safety, we
can't say that we can't do that, or language learning
app that means we have to have proper punctuation because
people are gonna look.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
To us blah blah blah.

Speaker 4 (44:10):
Like it was very much that way, and I mean
I was Neil was like, yeah, you're right, Like who
am I to like change that? Like I'm just here
to clock and clock out create the content. So that's
kind of how it started.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
So that was that was like the policy at the time, Yeah,
like that's just what it was.

Speaker 4 (44:23):
I also wasn't like we need to be doing this,
Like I didn't see it at that time because I
was still learning like just how to navigate it. I
think the switch kind of happened when that original like
learn Italian on TikTok and all that stuff started coming
out and it wasn't doing that well. And that was
like the first time we actually put like investment into
like a social platform, so like money and budget were

(44:45):
being put behind that, and they were like, yeah, we
need to cut this, like this is not worth our spend,
and it got to the point where I see I
was like TikTok's on a company priority, like we don't
into doing this. And I remember at that point kind
of feeling like no, like TikTok still like works, We're
just doing it wrong. And I think even that was
like a year into my career where I was like
able to build more of a voice and build like

(45:05):
more of an understanding of our brand and like just
kind of absorb what it is to like work in
social And so then to my boss.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
She stopped that.

Speaker 4 (45:12):
We're like Okay, that's fine, Maybe that's just not the
way to go about it my boss. We got back
into the office and this was my first day actually
in the office during the pandemic, after the pandemic pandemic.
So I walk in and this suit is like in
this back corner and this suit is actually was first
made just for like hr like recruiting events, like just

(45:33):
kind of internal things. It was never posted ever on
any of our platforms. I was like, that's weird, Like
why is there just like an owl suit sitting by
the market. Like it looked weird, So we see it,
and I like by the time, like I was just
on social and I was like, oh, like there's like
this trend that's like how am I supposed to like live, laugh,
love in these conditions? And I'm like I literally feel
like that right now, Like this is like staring at me.

(45:55):
I'm in marketing in like a corporate office, and it's
just like whatever. And I was taught telling my boss,
I was like, gonna be funny if we like filmed
a TikTok of like me sitting here working and like
this owl looking at me being like how am I
supposed to live left love in these conditions?

Speaker 2 (46:07):
And she's like, yeah, that's funny. And I was like, oh, yeah,
that's funny. Can you actually film me?

Speaker 4 (46:12):
And I think I have an idea here, and so
she's like sure, So she grabbed her phone and we
just put like the duo suit behind me and we
filmed it with that audio and we posted it and
it went stupid viral and that was like, wait a minute,
like there is something here with this suit and the comedy,
and like since that day, like five like four years ago,
like it's just been iterating and iterating and iterating on

(46:35):
that court insight that like that suit is just ridiculous
and it's almost like a form of satire because marketing
was so fresh at Duelingo at that point, like we
didn't have these systems even in place to like get
marketing checks or like social checks and like we're an
engineering first org. Like respectfully, they didn't care about marketing
at that point, like we were not a priority team, like,

(46:55):
which is fine, Like that's just how it was.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
That's how it was.

Speaker 4 (46:58):
But because there was it was a start up vibe
and no one really cared. We had free rein to
kind of just do whatever.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
Seeing like the other sort of weird approaches to two
brands had you seen, like the Wendy's Twitter back in
the day, was the stuff you were familiar with? Was
was there any inspiration you were taking from past approaches?

Speaker 4 (47:16):
Yeah, I think, I mean I think everyone knew about
Wendy's Twitter, like obviously I think for me though, it
was never as an Internet person, I didn't care about
brand Twitter or like brand talk. I guess now is
what I like and like when I grew like that
was not who I was following, Like yeah, and I
would hear the couple of clapbacks from Wendy, It's like
that one's super viral, But it was never like, oh,

(47:37):
this is my source of inspiration. I think more of
what was my source of inspiration for social and how
I wanted to build duo on like TikTok particularly, was
the success the character has had on the app, and
like the funny sentences or like the things people are
already sharing. And I actually think a lot of brands
do have memes already made about them. They're just scartlean and.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
Like we were.

Speaker 4 (47:57):
But like my whole thing was like okay, like we've
had a couple of Twitter moments that community has made,
like do it with a gun, like how do I
bring that to life on TikTok, Like that was my
job was translating that. So I think my inspiration was
actually more of like how our designers and product team
and content team built our app to be like naturally
gamified and interesting and getting people like make fan art

(48:19):
about it, or like getting people to like talk about
the different dynamics of the characters, like there's something there
if like people are organically talking about a brand, because
no one really does that on social, like at least
I still don't. I mean, I do a little bit
for my job outside of that, Like I feel like
if I didn't work in marketing, I probably would not
care about brands on social. So that was really cool
to me that people were they cared about this brand

(48:40):
for some reason.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
When you start getting kind of like a longer leash
to try weirder stuff, it seems like the whole office
is on board and is like regularly cast and stuff.

Speaker 4 (48:51):
Yeah, so I always say that, Like the number one
person that believe me was obviously my boss who filmed
the first video, and then Mark Pavoc, who wore the
duo suit for me.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Okay, yeah, so is it the is it the same guy.

Speaker 4 (49:07):
It changes now now that our team's grown and evolved.
We like higher dancers and stuff because Mark does have
a full time job at due Lingo.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
That's not doing that before everything blew up.

Speaker 4 (49:15):
Or I was like I had these ideas, but like
no one wants to film with me, Like can you
because I just know you, like from just working.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Together, and he was like, yeah, of course, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (49:24):
I feel like I literally owe my career to him,
and like MICHAELA who was my first boss, because they
believed in me and they did it. And then the
video started popping off and doing well. And the other
person that really believed in me was our legal uh
legal Steve was like I love what you're doing on TikTok,
Like here's some trends I see, or here's some things
we can do, or like how do we make this
like streamline? So it wasn't like I think that's what's

(49:44):
special about duos because it was so small and startupy.
It never had these like social versus legal or social
versus like. It was never that energy and because we
started off so viral early on, we've kind of just
kept that.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
Energy to never exists because we never knew a world
where that exis.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Does the staff their skew younger generally?

Speaker 4 (50:04):
Yeah, I mean yeah, we definitely do have some like
more seasoned marketing people, but they're very like we hired
a sow like because I was the only social coordinator
at the time, Like, we hired you because we know
we're bad at this and we need to be better
at it, so please do it. Like that was the mentality.
And then as I hired my team out, I think
I'm the eldest, and I'm like it's crazy because I'm

(50:25):
still used being the youngest, but like I was youngest
on the team and now I'm twenty seven, and like
our team spans from like twenty one to twenty four,
so like it's a very young team. But we also
have like like millennials as well on our team that
like help us with like other things. So it's like
we kind of just all use our assets as like
across age ranges. I actually really need, like my role
managers like expertise and like how do you navigate a

(50:47):
strategy and sell it? Like how do you show that
like the impact I have actually matters? It's like that's important,
right then I also need like the twenty year old
on my team of like what does what does Jen
alpha in doo now? Because like I'm not gen Alpha
and like to help bring that to life. So I
think everyone just plays their part in a really different way.
So as you know, I love writing, so I always
believe that, like, yes, humans were natural storytellers, and like

(51:09):
that is what brands want to do. But we're so
obsessed with telling our own story that we're not listening
I guess to the stories that like other people are saying,
which sounds like so like bad da, but like other stories,
like people are puttingduo with a gun, Like that's a
story too, all right, So like for me, it's like yeah, exactly,
And I think that for me was like how do

(51:29):
I build almost a sitcom around this character and show
these different storylines? And like we all have the tropes, right,
Like there's the lover, there's the enemy, there's the like
hero's journey, there's the struggle, there's the things they love,
the things they hate, and like why can't brands have that,
especially when you have a character involved, Like yeah, like

(51:50):
I'm going to do it, and the only way to
do it is to just keep exposing the audience to it,
so like that was like where du Alipa came from,
and the insight is just like Duelingo just sounds like
du Alipa, So we're.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
Like dumb people are saying that anyways.

Speaker 4 (52:02):
Yeah, yeah, and she's hot, so we're like perfect, that's
who Like Duo is going to be upset, like that's
his love interest or like just kind of integrating the
way that we know how to tell stories as humans
or the stories that we enjoy and just finding the
pieces that need to be filled and figuring out who
those are was like, I think kind of how we
built our strategy around it.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
And has there been any sort of pitch that you've
experienced pushback on?

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Oh all the time.

Speaker 4 (52:26):
Actually, Like the scrub Daddy video, our CEO messaged me
to take it down, but it already I was like,
it already made us around striking, I'll take it down.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
Is the original not of because I remember it's not yea,
I guess the different one.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
So okay.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
The story around this was.

Speaker 4 (52:39):
Something I was trying to do at that stage in
my career, was like, how do I find more like
minded like brands and social teams to like kind of
amplify our presence, like as just being content creators. And
the scrub Daddy team was a team that I really
looked up to. They made really funny content and it
literally was just like, hey, guys, do you guys want
to do like a free content club, Like we'll bring
the duo suit, you bring the scrib Daddy suit, come
to the office, we'll create stuff.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
We're like, all right, this is like what we want
to do.

Speaker 4 (53:03):
And then they were like, oh, we created these cute
little duo sponges and I was like, oh, that's are
cute babies.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
And that was kind of it.

Speaker 4 (53:08):
And we were creating content and I was like, guys,
what if like I've been seeing this like pregnancy like
TikTok going off. I don't know, Like it was so crazy,
very tradwife kind of stuff, and I was like, what
if we use this glad you came with this video
and they were like, yeah, yeah, why not. So we
like filmed it, we put it up, we posted it,
and it blew up, and I think, like for us,

(53:30):
and this is actually also in a sense happened with
the Dead Duo.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
We kind of forget like how attached people are.

Speaker 4 (53:36):
To duo that like we're so lost in the sauce
sometimes that we're like, yeah, we'll posted an ogle viral.
Well I guess like maybe I won't even go that
far or maybe maybe a million views, And then people
were like no, no, no, we like this, and now
it's like lore. When we posted that, it stayed up
for like four hours and our c I was like, guys,
we cannot be doing this. And I was like, okay, great,
I'll take it down. However, what do you not like

(53:59):
about it? He's like the visuals weird, but like he's like,
more than that, the glad you came makes it like
really weird. So I was like, okay, what if I
repost it, but just don't add that part to the top,
like the glad you came and change the audio And
he's like, okay, fine. Like it's always a negotiation for
like these high risk moments, and it's never a like

(54:19):
take it down, you're in trouble. How dare you do
this to our brand? Like it's not punishment. It's like
we're iterating and learning, and the only way you know
where the line is until you cross it on social
because social changes every day. Honestly, like the people that
are most upset about duo things or marketers like usually
are And that's where we were like, well, who are
we prioritizing, Like if we see this negative sentiment going up,

(54:41):
like who's driving this? And ninety percent of the time
it's someone who works in marketing that's just like upset
about us not having the clear brand guidelines and strategy
and things that we've all learned to do, while our
audience is like, we love it and we're getting new users,
so I'm like, our priority is always going to be
our new users and new business while like obviously like
we love marketers and want them to enjoy what we're doing.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
But like when we.

Speaker 4 (55:03):
Prioritize, like how we assess risk, its goal is going
to have like our users first. I think what was
cool is like we have how did you hear about
a survey which before just existed as an onboarding survey
when you joined, and it would say like did you
learn about.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Us from friends, from family, from Google? Whatever?

Speaker 4 (55:18):
And as our TikTok started blowing up, we were like,
what if we just add TikTok to that and see
like who knows? Because at the time we were like impressions,
great brand awareness done, and then it was like maybe
there is a tie, and then we just added TikTok
and every time we had a viral video, like a
video over a million views, bam, a spike any users, bam.
It would keep like we would keep seeing it. And

(55:39):
then that's also when a sl team senior leadership was
like let them cook. And that's literally what it's been like,
which is so awesome. And I think the origin stories
of how we almost worked backwards like has worked out well.
And now it's funny because you'll see like SLT pitch ideas.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
To us and they're like will they accept it?

Speaker 4 (55:57):
Like will they green light it, which is like different
than like a lot of social teams where they're hoping
that like their senior leadership like allows them to post
what they want to post.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
Right, you have the power, Yeah, exactly, And we'll be
right back with more. Zaria Parvez and Horny Little Owl.

(56:28):
Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I'm in the middle of
reading that new tell All memoir about working high up
at Facebook, and guys, I think this Mark Zuckerberg guy
might be kind of a bad fella. Mark.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
He's wired in Sorry, he's wired in? Yes, about now
you're still wired in?

Speaker 1 (56:48):
Where's the rest of my interview with Zaria Parvez.

Speaker 4 (56:51):
A big part of my like what I've been working
on honestly, like this past half and like this year
is evolving our brand and what does that look like.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
So we actually started like a writer's room.

Speaker 4 (57:02):
Where I brought in people who were like I've always
enjoyed their work, love them, think they're smart, and they
have no care about dueling. Go like, let like come
in and like just tell me, like how you would
like how would you advertise due lingo music? And like
I gave pretty much gave them no context, barely any
brief just to see what they would come out with. Glean,
I like, never want unhinged to just be like our crutch.

(57:23):
So I like, for me, it's like we should be
unhinged to be funny, Like it shouldn't just be like
showing duos, but just to get engagement, Like it needs
to have like a reason why we're being unhinged, because
that makes it that just makes a joke smarter and funnier.
WHOA like you guys just put duos but on national
TV like as brands as we try to strategize everything
so much, and like humans don't think in strategy, Like

(57:44):
some of these things are serendipitous and good moments. And
like I always say, it was like seventy five percent
luck honestly that it took off, and then like, what's
seventy five was twenty Yeah, twenty five. I'm like, we're
a good one hundred and then twenty five.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
Percent of like just into marketing I know, right well,
I was like I need to do go math, but.

Speaker 4 (58:03):
Like twenty five percent of just like us optimizing it
and like leaning in and like taking advantage of the
moment because it's so sad when I see like something
viral that a brand can let land, like you know,
lean into and they don't, And I'm like, just take
advantage of it.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
But yeah, I think that.

Speaker 4 (58:20):
That's the cool part about it is we were allowed
to take advantage of that moment.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
So how did dead duo so but that that sounded
like a sort of a full company collaboration.

Speaker 4 (58:28):
Yeah, So essentially what happened was, as I mentioned a
little bit earlier, every maybe like four months, the product
team does an app icon change where the normal duo
green owl on your phone changes to a different emotion
or something just something different, And the whole point is
for you to be on your phone and you're so

(58:49):
used to seeing that green bird and all of a sudden,
like it's sick and there's like a big booger coming
out and you're like, ea, what is that? And that
resurrects new users. Something we realized though, is like when
it's an emotion, like we did it with sick, do
we did it with like a wrinkly face like old
looking duo that when it has a user emotion or something,
people talk a lot about it on social. Then we
were like, Okay, this works well when social works with product.

(59:10):
Next time around, let's build another campaign and again maybe
it'll do well like whatever. And what happened is product
ab tests two things. So they had a debt duo
and I think they had like a crying duo. They
both kind of came out the same like marketing like,
since you already kind of did a campaign before, what
do you want to do?

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Like for us, it's kind of the same.

Speaker 4 (59:30):
And I was like, I think we should do debt
duo because it's an emotion, like people can react and
relate to it. And then they'll probably post about it
and we can actually build a storyline around. And originally
it was just supposed to be four posts. He died,
we announce his death, show the funeral cause of death,
then we resurrect him and that and the whole brand
messaging behind that was to be like Duo would fake

(59:51):
his own death just for you to do your lesson,
Like there's nothing this bird won't do for you to
just open your damn phone.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
So we posted this fake pr state and it blew up, like, Yeah,
virality beyond I've ever seen.

Speaker 4 (01:00:05):
And I think being in Pittsburgh, you're kind of in
your own little like bubble because you're not in New York,
you're not on LA, you're not in these big cities.
When we were like, oh, we were going to post
just like the funeral video tomorrow, but we should post
it now like people want answers, And so then we
post the funeral video and then we're like, wait, what
if we like also kill the other characters and like
say they're also debt, and like that's like how it
kind of kept building, like the narrative, like these posts

(01:00:26):
sort of entering that weren't part of our original social
plan and we're like, oh, dang, we really did build
an icon and we killed him and people cared, and
I think for us that was a realization moment too.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
Of like what did we just do?

Speaker 4 (01:00:38):
And so like that was that was really fun and
we've just we got to work with different team members
to just bring it to life in different ways, and
it was it was such a joy.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
It was like one of my highlights of my career
for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Part of the reason you went to do Olingo is
because it was a company that aligned with your values,
which I know, when we're talking about marketing and advertising general,
that is a mine field to find a place that
you feel good about. Yeah, and now, just having been
in advertising your entire professional life, what are your feelings

(01:01:12):
on that? How have you seen that sort of manifest
in other areas of this industry.

Speaker 4 (01:01:16):
So I was able to internet the advertising agency my
junior year summer. I think the first reaction I had
was like, oh, it's like really white and like I
grew up like very proudly Pakistani, very proudly Muslim. Like
it was just such a different lifestyle, I think, and
it was really weird to like walk into a space
where like new York City's one of the most diverse

(01:01:39):
cities right ever in the world, and then you just
walk in and you're like, there's literally no one that
looks like me. And I think that's also like candidly,
a lot of Muslims also don't enter communications fields because
naturally most of us tend to be kids of immigrants,
and immigrants care about sciences and arts and not arts, sorry,

(01:01:59):
not art, but like sciences and math, and so like
a lot of people come engineers and doctors, and like
we don't enter communications fields. And then we ask, hey,
like why are Muslims being like badly represented in media,
and like because none of us are there, Like we're
not prioritizing like being in these spaces, and that's going
to have ramifications. And so for me, like that was
kind of a big wake up call during like this

(01:02:21):
experience and like nothing like happened.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
It just felt weird.

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
And my entire thesis in college that I was writing
for graduation was actually about like a playbook of how
to advertise to Muslims and communicate with Muslims and.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
Like what does that look like?

Speaker 4 (01:02:38):
So part of that playbook was like all about like
diversity marketing, in a sense and like what's the right
appropriate way to go about it?

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
But also like a part of us.

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
Like exploring like who are like the five Muslims in
marketing because I can barely find any and interviewing them,
being like how did you end up here?

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
And like what is the situation?

Speaker 4 (01:02:55):
And like now in my five years, I've seen it
grow and expand and I'm so glad to see that
there's more diversity there. But like it was just a
really interesting wake up call for me where I was like,
I I feel happy and most creative in places that
I feel safe, and so like that's where kind of
how do lingo fit into the narrative? Where I was like,
this seems like a company that has to be inherently

(01:03:15):
diverse because you need people to speak different languages and
usually people who speak different languages come from different parts
of the world and have to be part of this mission.
And then the co founders themselves are both immigrants. So
it was just like so many levels of oh, this
makes sense, And like I remember when I accepted the job,
doing marketing was not anything, and I remember like I

(01:03:36):
was a top performer at University of Oregon. It was
like You're gonna go to Nike, you and know Addin
Kennedy and do all this stuff. And I remember accepting
it and somebody like straight up being like that was
the biggest mistake you've ever done, Like you should not,
Like why are you doing that?

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Like why do you give up an agency?

Speaker 4 (01:03:49):
Like because I had an agency offer at the time,
and it was like a whole thing, and I was
like stressed, Like I was like, did I just like
throw in my career?

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
Like I don't even know what I'm doing.

Speaker 4 (01:03:58):
But I just something in my gut just felt safe there,
Like talking to the people in the interview process, I
was like, this is just what I want to do,
and I'm just going to try it and do it.
And it worked out that safety feeling also working in
a place where you just feel comfortable, like I was
allowed to be myself, which means I was allowed to
be unhinged and weird, which means I was allowed to
post these things. Like it creates an environment of like

(01:04:20):
safety and creativity and like bringing in different ways of
thinking and like I always say, like being an immigrant kid,
like I was a third culture kid. I knew how
to like be wide enough for my white friends at
school and be broad enough for my parents at home,
and like navigate literally jumping between different audiences and different
groups and different people. And that's what you have to
do in marketing. You have to know how to talk

(01:04:40):
to different people in their own language. So like third
culture kids are like set up for this, they just
need this space and the opportunity to do it. So
like that's also why I think Dueling Go is so successful,
because we focused on that third culture energy in that space,
and like sometimes you'll still see like Tiktoks and Earth
that were reaching a new audience. It's still viral because
it's like stuff that I know, or like I'm really

(01:05:02):
intentional about our team, Like I want our team to
be as diverse as possible, and like we have people
from all walks of life, all backgrounds. No one on
my content team actually as a traditional marketing background, or
if they do, it's like very lightly touched.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Our production assistant, for example, saw.

Speaker 4 (01:05:18):
Her volunteering somewhere and I was like, I just like
the way you work with like the systems of the
people here.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
I think you could be a great PA. Would you
like to like join?

Speaker 4 (01:05:26):
So like she does that, which is like crazy, even
like our content designer she got rejected from douling Go
from douling Goo's illustration and design team, and I was like, cool,
I'll take you, and like it was like stuff like
that where it's just like I love the underdogs because
I think those stories are like the people who try
the hardest, who want to do the best and just
never got the opportunity to do it for me, Like
even brands that like because I'm so part of gen

(01:05:47):
Z and like brands that I like, I'm actually not
a brand talk person in general, Like I'm like, I
work on this, I don't want to see it outside
of it. But like any brands that I do fallow
where like either I really care about their founders ethos
or like you know, it's just more like there's some
responsibility or accountability there that feels like they care and
you can't about it and people can see right through
it when it's not the.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
Last thing I wanted to talk about burnout and protecting yourself. Yes,
how do you've managed that? And I know that no
one has the answer, but I'm curious how you've had
to sort of manage that throughout your career.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
Yeah, so for me. I.

Speaker 4 (01:06:25):
I am so grateful that I was able to skyrocket
to so much success so early on. Like I remember
when I got four of thirty or thirty at like
twenty two years old. I was like, whoa, I'm not
just saying that to be like eh, eh, include, you
know what I mean, but like it was just.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
It felt really surreal.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
But the drawback of that was like I don't think
I got the opportunity to make mistakes because every mistake
I made was in public, and I don't think it's
anyone's fault, Like it like it's not like, oh, do
overwork to me or like I did this, Like it
was just the reality of this situation, and like, I'm
glad I took ownership of the world. I'm glad I
stood up and said, hey, that was me that created it.

(01:07:02):
But at the same time, like that created this mental
load on myself to the point where I actually took
a medical leave last year for like five months of
just like sorry, not five months, five weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
I wish it was five months.

Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
And I remember telling my boss. I was like, I'm
like not well, like I feel anxious coming into the office.
I'm scared of something flopping I'm scared of like what
people will say about me, Like I don't want my
face being seen anywhere I get exactly like and that's
not me. Like I feel very fortunate my entire life.
I've never actually had like crazy, any like mental health issues,
and I was happy with like who I was and

(01:07:34):
what I wanted to do. And I was like, I'm
just burnt out and I just need time away from
the spotlight, Like I just need a break to reset
and recharge. And I'm lucky I'm at a place that
like allowed that and supported that, and like everyone knew.
I wrote about it too, like I said, I loved writing.
I wrote about it on my LinkedIn and I shared it,
and it was it was one of those things where

(01:07:55):
like as social managers, like we're always expected to wear
so many hats that like at some point that's get
heavy and it's like I can't, I can't do this.
I came back and I remember my biggest thing was
like I just never I never want to feel burnout,
and I never want to make other people feel burnout
around me, especially my team after going through what I
went through. And I think what I really hang on too,

(01:08:16):
is like creativity ebbs and flows, and like we need
to be mindful of that. If if you want impact,
you have to have those moments of like ebbs. You
have to be okay with, like not posting stuff for
a couple of weeks. You have to be okay with
like people saying I need time off, or hey I
need to work leave work early, or hey, I need
to work from home today, Like this is overwhelming, Like

(01:08:37):
that needs to be okay and like accepted in part
of your strategy and part of your team structure. So no,
I don't have a cure to burn out, but I
think for me, that's what I really try to do
of like, I am very aware of it, and I
just try to find moments of like I never want
you to feel like all you are to meies like
an impression generator, Like feel creative when you feel creative,

(01:08:58):
and let's figure out how you can work at it.
That's kind of how I've been approaching it. I don't
know if it's the right way or the wrong way,
but it's working relatively. So some quarters are going to
be great and some aren't. And like, not everyone is
meant to go viral, and if they were, then like
virality wouldn't exist like, that's just part of the cycle
of the Internet and life. So as more gen z
become role managers who have been through the ringer like

(01:09:19):
how they act and behave and hopefully prevent burnout.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Thank you so much again, Tazaria for her time and
her work. I want her to be a comedy writer
so bad. Follow her at the links in the description.
And with that, dear listener, we emerge from the sacred
wood of sentient brand marketing on social media. And where
does this leave us? I don't know, honestly. Well, I'm

(01:09:48):
very grateful to the marketing professionals and just kind people
who lent their time and experience to make this series possible.
It still does give me some uneasy about the future
of what marketing is going to look like on the Internet,
and as some listeners were right to point out, representing

(01:10:09):
a company online that is very often cloud chasing on
Internet trends can lead and often does lead to something
called digital blackface, which is defined by CNN's John Blake
as quote a practice where white people co opt online
expressions of black imagery, slang, catchphrases, or culture to convey
comic relief or express emotions unquote, although I would say

(01:10:33):
in the case of this discussion, as there are obviously
non white people in corporate marketing, although Aszaria pointed out,
this itself is still a very white dominated space. That
digital blackface has been used as a way for companies
to seem as if they're a part of the mainstream
Internet culture that, like so many creative worlds, has been

(01:10:55):
innovated by black artists and creators before having that work
co op did by white people, or just capitalism in general.
Jen Alpha is the first generation to truly have no
memory of what it's like to build a sense of
self free from the Internet, and it remains to be

(01:11:15):
seen what that's going to mean down the line. Because
I don't mean to fear monger, I genuinely don't know.
These will be my kids, my nieces, my nephews. And
the only thing I think you can do that's more
unproductive and self sabotaging than assume your children's generation is
going to ruin the world is that your children's generation

(01:11:38):
is solely responsible for saving the world. It does freak
me out that kids are more vulnerable than ever to
this kind of advertising, and it's a relief when that
advertising is for something as innocuous as learning a second language.
But in the big picture, it's hard to say. I

(01:11:59):
have plenty of young parents in my family and friend
groups who are trying to shield their kids from pernicious marketing.
But let's be honest, we're not going to be any
more successful than our parents were. Think of virtually every
social media manager you've heard from in this series. Serenity
Disco found themselves on live journaling sites before becoming the

(01:12:20):
Denny's tumbler. Amy Brown was Amy from MySpace before becoming
the Wendy's Twitter. Nathan Alibach was an anti capitalist musician
before translating that ethos to the stake of Twitter. Zaria
Parvez was the kid that was scolded out of taking
down a Catholic school in the third grade before becoming

(01:12:41):
the horny due Lingo bird. As long as there are
creative kids, they're going to get around what their parents
don't want them to access. And all of these social
media managers and writers are talented, funny, creative people who
have had to make a living. I think a little
bit too easy to criticize this class of writer before

(01:13:04):
considering how lucky or more often financially privileged. You need
to be just to be able to write without worrying
where your next rent check is coming from, your healthcare,
whatever it may be. Most of us are serving a machine,
and to be able to extract yourself from that is
a tremendous privilege. But that also doesn't mean that it's

(01:13:28):
the only way to make ends meet. And I feel,
to some extent like I'm blowing hot air here. I
probably am because I'm broadcasting this on iHeartRadio. And while
I've been really lucky to have basically full creative control
of my work here, it's because it's monetized to serve
something larger than myself. So I'm certainly not above this,

(01:13:50):
and any criticism of this environment is a criticism of
myself too. The only conclusion I can ever come to
is that what would resolve this kind of creativity having
to be used to sell something is a public reinvestment
into arts and affirming it as something that's important, which
under the current American administration. Best of luck, but we

(01:14:14):
should keep talking about it. This weirdly tapers into what
we're going to be talking about next week, and so
with a little luck and a little bit of revolutionary
action Sentient two Horny Brands. Your sixteenth Minute ends Now.

(01:14:36):
Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and
iHeart Radios. It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamielrossis.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. The
Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
from Brant Crater and Pet. Shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson,

(01:15:00):
my cats fleeing Casper and my pet rock Bird will
outlive us all. Bye.