Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Story Stay ECUA.
Speaker 1: Six six. Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where
Speaker 1: we take a look at the Internet's characters, see how
Speaker 1: their moment affected them and what that says about us
Speaker 1: and the Internet. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus, and today
Speaker 1: after a saga that took us all the way back
Speaker 1: to the turn of the twentieth century in American marketing
Speaker 1: and up to literally last week, this is the fourth
Speaker 1: and final installment in our sentient Brands that sometimes get
Speaker 1: too violent or horny series. So just to start, if
Speaker 1: you haven't listened to our first several parts, please.
Speaker 2: Go do that.
Speaker 1: And if you're joining us again, congratulations you have made
Speaker 1: it to the duo lingo this OWL episode. Hopefully that's
Speaker 1: thrilling for you. Now. When we left off in our
Speaker 1: last episode, we spoke with Nathan Alibach of the nihilist
Speaker 1: Stakum's account and we began to inch ever closer toward
Speaker 1: the present. But while Nathan still works in marketing, as
Speaker 1: do Amy Brown of Wendy's Twitter Rosemaster Fame, neither are
Speaker 1: still posting on the accounts that they initially made famous.
Speaker 1: Today that changes my interview for the final part of
Speaker 1: this series is with someone who I've received potentially a
Speaker 1: weird amount of requests for. Her name is Zaria Parvez,
Speaker 1: but you probably know her as the duo lingo owl
Speaker 1: on TikTok. It is not Zaria in the owl suit,
Speaker 1: at least not usually. Usually it's some guy named Mark.
Speaker 1: I got the exclusive Keep listening. But before we can
Speaker 1: explore how Zaria Parvez, a recent college graduate, went from
Speaker 1: suggesting that the inoffensive green owl mascot of a free
Speaker 1: language learning app become extremely horny and virtually grow the
Speaker 1: company single handedly, let's return to the two marketing roads
Speaker 1: diverging in a wood we were talking about in our
Speaker 1: last episode, Ian get the music going. Okay, here we
Speaker 1: are in the wood. We've explored nihilism as a marketing
Speaker 1: tactic now through Nathan Allabach's time running social media for Stakum,
Speaker 1: and we discussed his feelings on running the account now
Speaker 1: all these years later. So today we're taking a turn
Speaker 1: into what was until five or so years ago, the
Speaker 1: final frontier of selling product to a logged in Internet
Speaker 1: person being weirdly horn I want to explain being horny
Speaker 1: to you. You know it when you see it, when
Speaker 1: you feel it, you little pervert. But as far as
Speaker 1: social media marketing goes, being horny as a brand really
Speaker 1: came alive in the late twenty tens and experienced a
Speaker 1: somewhat unsettling uptick in the early twenty twenties. And wouldn't
Speaker 1: you know it, Nathan Alibach carefully tracked and published a
Speaker 1: short history that marked this turn from anxiety and nihilism
Speaker 1: in social media advertising being the flavor of the month
Speaker 1: to the owl that fucks. He published this in Vulture
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. It's a piece called When Brands
Speaker 1: Got Horny, and I've linked it in the description. So
Speaker 1: to give you an idea of what I mean by
Speaker 1: horny brands, consider where we're coming from here, where Amy
Speaker 1: Brown at Wendy Twitter tapped into a propensity for violence.
Speaker 1: Nathan and Stakham subsequently appealed to anxiety and depression on
Speaker 1: social media at the time, although because it hasn't come
Speaker 1: up yet, I will say that no one took advantage
Speaker 1: of depression more directly, although I do believe it was
Speaker 1: taken out of context mid thread than the fake orange
Speaker 1: juice brand Sunny D in February twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: Saying I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 1: This still makes me laugh. I'm sorry, but at this
Speaker 1: point a tweet like this would prompt a reaction from
Speaker 1: other brands that was well received but kind of expected.
Speaker 1: At this point, Moonpies replies to sunny D, asking if
Speaker 1: they're okay, Pop Tart offers sunny D a hug. You
Speaker 1: get the idea. Even the official account of Satan, Blue,
Speaker 1: Check and Everything.
Speaker 3: Replied, I feel you, sunny D, my friend.
Speaker 1: We have to keep moving. And while there were some
Speaker 1: horny accounts earlier in the decade, it was mostly because
Speaker 1: being a horny was what actually made sense for that company.
Speaker 1: Think the porn Hub Twitter account. But in the back
Speaker 1: half of the twenty tens, it seems like the success
Speaker 1: of the fifty Shades of Gray franchise sort of emboldened
Speaker 1: some social media managers to get a little kink.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 1: From the same week that sunny D threatened suicide, the gigantic,
Speaker 1: multi billion dollar company Verizon tweeted the following.
Speaker 3: Yes, T Mobile, We're into BDSM, bigger coverage map, devastating
Speaker 3: speed and massive capacity.
Speaker 1: Verizon is a terrible company and yet I am laughing
Speaker 1: at that. The other examples Nathan Ahlabach uses in his
Speaker 1: piece are photoshops or quote tweeted replies to horny contents
Speaker 1: from brands like Jimmy John's and the mixtape dropping grocery
Speaker 1: store brand itself Hamburger Helper in twenty seventeen. But it's
Speaker 1: the next year that Nathan identifies that being horny on
Speaker 1: Maine and yes, I do feel quite old saying that,
Speaker 1: but being horny unmean is now culturally acceptable, which means
Speaker 1: that more brand accounts are willing to do it. And
Speaker 1: this is a very long way of saying that twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen was the year that it became popular for brands
Speaker 1: to participate in no Nut November. I quit, I quit
Speaker 1: my job just getting Here's a tweet from Burger King
Speaker 1: on November one, twenty eighteen, him it's only a month
Speaker 1: wif fu crying emoji, and Burger King follows us up
Speaker 1: with welcome to King Burger, where we can do it
Speaker 1: your way, but don't get crazy. Okay, this month is
Speaker 1: so unpleasant. Next, corn Nuts spells out the word nut
Speaker 1: in nut emojis. Mister Peanuts. Social media says that you
Speaker 1: can eat him in November because he's technically a lagome.
Speaker 1: You can see how this fanned out. Nutter Butter obviously
Speaker 1: got in on this, really name a nut based product
Speaker 1: with a Twitter account, and they were engaging with no
Speaker 1: Nut November twenty eighteen. But I will say that corn
Speaker 1: Nuts did take the cake because they just at one
Speaker 1: point posted what is the craziest place you've nutted enough?
Speaker 1: Another successful account posting horny stuff was Netflix in the
Speaker 1: late twenty tens, And keep in mind this was when
Speaker 1: Netflix was much better thought of in the public sphere
Speaker 1: than it is today and was still sort of considered
Speaker 1: to be a place to find generally good TV and
Speaker 1: wasn't yet bleeding subscribers. But what's interesting here is that
Speaker 1: Netflix social media accounts for multiple countries. We're posting horny
Speaker 1: tweets to the point where it's safe to assume that
Speaker 1: this was a globally mandated media strategy.
Speaker 3: We're seeing post like one time, babe doing a step
Speaker 3: on me and it was awesome, what's something you.
Speaker 1: Can say during sex? But also when you manage a
Speaker 1: brand Twitter account, And in most detail, to line up
Speaker 1: with the release of that Zach Effron Ted Bundy movie,
Speaker 1: I've seen a.
Speaker 3: Lot of talk about Ted Bundy's alleged hotness and would
Speaker 3: like to gently remind everyone that there are literally thousands
Speaker 3: of hot men on the service, almost all of whom
Speaker 3: are not convicted serial murderers.
Speaker 1: You get the idea. By early twenty twenty, Arbi's had
Speaker 1: created their own WIFU character, and by the time the
Speaker 1: pandemic lockdown happened, Nathan Alibach Crace's accounts like this, moving
Speaker 1: into a more blue Ball's horny style of content. So
Speaker 1: by this logic, we were to believe, as social media
Speaker 1: consumers that the brands were sitting at home along with
Speaker 1: millions of other people not having sex. By twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: horny brands have been fully normalized. I'm talking weird posts
Speaker 1: of build a Bears and silk robes called build a
Speaker 1: Bear after Dark. I'm talking KFC's Twitter posting jacked Colonel
Speaker 1: Sanders fanart without any comment, and even Denny's Parkening back
Speaker 1: to our first episode in this series comes full circle
Speaker 1: and pulls from the IHOB playbook, briefly rebranding itself as
Speaker 1: Wait for It, Daddies, and It's here we arrive at
Speaker 1: the duo Lingo owl horny saga that has since evolved
Speaker 1: into multiple story arcs, and most recently, a pivot back
Speaker 1: to violence when the green owl Duo Lingo mascot named
Speaker 1: Duo was quote unquote hit by a cyber truck and killed.
Speaker 1: And all of this happened just as I started working
Speaker 1: on this series in early February twenty twenty five. And yes,
Speaker 1: because it is twenty twenty five, Duo Lingo immediately had
Speaker 1: merch to launch their dead mascot.
Speaker 2: With twenty twenty five has got us all knocked down.
Speaker 2: But not to worry. Where monetizing grief because we are
Speaker 2: in corporation.
Speaker 4: For the low price of twenty nine ninety nine, you
Speaker 4: could prove you really love Duo and friends with the
Speaker 4: customs cop.
Speaker 1: I mean, you got to hand it to them, monetizing grief.
Speaker 1: Who do they think they are? Me and every comedian
Speaker 1: I've ever met. But none of this would be possible
Speaker 1: without the Duo Lingo head of social Media, Zaria Parvez,
Speaker 1: who moved from Portland, Oregon to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, shortly after
Speaker 1: graduating college to start working at Duo Lingo, and whose
Speaker 1: energy and enthusiasm and frankly just being a longtime poster
Speaker 1: brought the company to New heights and escalated all the
Speaker 1: way to showing Duo the Owl's little ass cheeks during
Speaker 1: a Super Bowl commercial. And because we did an ethics
Speaker 1: check in our last episode to see how closely the
Speaker 1: business practices of Stakhum aligned with Nathan's progressive social media campaign,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take this chance to do a quick
Speaker 1: look at the product that the unhinged energy of Zaria's
Speaker 1: interpretation of Duo the Owl. So let's take a look
Speaker 1: at Duo Lingo. Honestly, after looking at this for a while,
Speaker 1: I think Zaria Parvez has it a little bit easier
Speaker 1: than anyone else I've talked to during this series, really,
Speaker 1: just because she is not hawking processed meat. Instead, it's
Speaker 1: her job to try and engage younger audiences online into
Speaker 1: learning a second language on their phone. It is a
Speaker 1: comparatively wholesome mission, and the company itself has been mostly
Speaker 1: without scandal. And I say mostly because like many longtime
Speaker 1: successful apps, there has been an increased reliance on AI
Speaker 1: from Duo Lingo that's given them the excuse to lay
Speaker 1: off much of its workforce. And we can assume using
Speaker 1: AI has had a tremendously negative impact on the environment.
Speaker 1: No company without sin, but Duo Lingo was founded in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven by two twenty some things. As these businesses
Speaker 1: tend to be founded by a guy named Lewis van
Speaker 1: On and the bone chillingly named Severin Hacker. Imagine knowing
Speaker 1: a guy with that name. So while the AI controversy
Speaker 1: is entirely bullshit, and from what I can tell, the
Speaker 1: founders have been very evasive about it as far as
Speaker 1: an app that inevitably collects user data goes, NordVPN recently
Speaker 1: said that Duo Lingo is a relatively safe app to use.
Speaker 1: Sure they've had data breaches before, but not more than
Speaker 1: your average app. I actually used Duolingo myself for a
Speaker 1: while during the summer of twenty nineteen after I saw
Speaker 1: the movie Midsummar and decided, Hey, Jamie, what if you
Speaker 1: learned Swedish so you can Midsummar. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: the thinking was there, and it was really vulnerable of
Speaker 1: me to tell you that, because since the twenty twenty lockdown,
Speaker 1: Duolingo membership with both pay and free account options has
Speaker 1: continued to increase. It's a very successful app, and Zaria
Speaker 1: Parvez explains in our interview that She chose to go
Speaker 1: to Duo Lingo over other marketing jobs because of its mission.
Speaker 1: She wanted to work for a company whose mission she
Speaker 1: believed in and a workplace that was likely to be
Speaker 1: more diverse. Because being Pakistani American, she very often found
Speaker 1: herself being the only non white person in the room
Speaker 1: and hoped that a company with a multicultural mission stood
Speaker 1: to be a little bit different. So Zaria comes aboard
Speaker 1: to Duolingo. In twenty twenty a terrible time to be
Speaker 1: a person, much less a recent college graduate, but as
Speaker 1: we just revisited, a sort of darkly advantageous time to
Speaker 1: be a social media marketer. Speaking in the most cynical
Speaker 1: terms possible, you weren't likely to find a more captive
Speaker 1: audience than twenty twenty, and learning a lot language mostly
Speaker 1: for free seemed to many like a less nihilistic way
Speaker 1: to spend one's time. But even with that considered, prior
Speaker 1: to early twenty twenty one, Duo Lingo wasn't really known
Speaker 1: for its social media presence, even though, as we just
Speaker 1: talked about, Horny Brand's strategy on social media had already
Speaker 1: reached its peak at this time, at least over on Twitter.
Speaker 1: So while Zaria didn't invent this style, she has essentially
Speaker 1: perfected it because, as any convincing social media marketer does,
Speaker 1: I've gleaned at this point, she's made her own playbook
Speaker 1: and posted what she actually thought was funny authenticity. It's
Speaker 1: the thing that all advertisers are going for, and so
Speaker 1: few actually accomplish. Okay. Early twenty twenty one, Zaria Parvez
Speaker 1: has yet to take the lead on Duo Lingo's social media,
Speaker 1: but has been at the company for about a year
Speaker 1: at this point, and Duo Lingo at this time is
Speaker 1: running a pretty dry social strategy, and for the purposes
Speaker 1: of this episode, I'm going to focus on TikTok, where
Speaker 1: they've had the most success at this time. The plan
Speaker 1: was ostensibly to pay existing TikTok influencers to collaborate with
Speaker 1: the brand and talk about the languages that they were
Speaker 1: learning in order to get their fans to sign up
Speaker 1: for the app. You've seen stuff like this before. It's
Speaker 1: nothing particularly edgy, but the posts you're cute.
Speaker 5: Did you know that?
Speaker 6: In Dutch there is the saying new compt de app
Speaker 6: out the mau, which means now the monkey comes out
Speaker 6: a sleeve.
Speaker 2: New compt de app out.
Speaker 3: The mau is used when something is revealed that was
Speaker 3: previously secret.
Speaker 1: However, the posts were also underperforming, and per Azaria in
Speaker 1: our interview, the company didn't think it was worth the
Speaker 1: fees of the influencers to continue it, and instead of
Speaker 1: thinking of a new strategy, Duo Lingo very nearly deprioritized
Speaker 1: TikTok marketing entirely, and Zaria, an avid TikTok fan herself,
Speaker 1: disagreed with this and asked for the chance to just
Speaker 1: chase a few trends on the app. And almost immediately
Speaker 1: this approach blew up, in no small part thanks to
Speaker 1: a mascot suit of Duo, the Green Owl, that Zaria
Speaker 1: found hanging around the office luring at everybody. The first
Speaker 1: video that blows up is one of Zaria herself, because
Speaker 1: in the beginning she appeared in these videos pretty regularly.
Speaker 1: She's sitting at a desk in the Duo Lingo offices
Speaker 1: with the creepy empty owl mascot suit sitting behind her,
Speaker 1: with trending audio playing. How am I supposed to live
Speaker 1: laugh love in these conditions? And in part because of
Speaker 1: the weirdness of it, and in part because of using
Speaker 1: that trending audio, this TikTok blows up and before you
Speaker 1: know but Zaria is on a roll. She asks a
Speaker 1: coworker to jump into the duo owl suit that's Mark,
Speaker 1: and within a couple of weeks, the TikTok account had
Speaker 1: fully pivoted to using Duo as a sometimes menacing, sometimes
Speaker 1: vaguely horny tool to remind people on TikTok to do
Speaker 1: their daily duo lingo or to sign up and start
Speaker 1: learning a language if they hadn't already. Now, if you
Speaker 1: haven't used duo Lingo before, this probably sounds weird and circuitous,
Speaker 1: but if you have, it's no surprise that Zaria's strategy,
Speaker 1: which was both very intentional and really fun for her
Speaker 1: to do, worked really well because the way that she
Speaker 1: was anthropomorphizing Duo the Owl was very similar to the
Speaker 1: way that fans of Duo Lingo had been making popular
Speaker 1: memes about that same character for years. The difference was that,
Speaker 1: prior to Zaria taking on this role at the front
Speaker 1: of social media, the company had never interacted with these
Speaker 1: very popular memes. So while it might sound out of
Speaker 1: nowhere that Zaria having a static image of the Duo
Speaker 1: mascot suit in the office with her eyes, mouth and
Speaker 1: voice lip syncing to audio like this.
Speaker 3: Uh oh oh, I know what the consequences of my actions.
Speaker 1: You know it's your boy, and I just want to
Speaker 1: apologize here because I know how painful it is for
Speaker 1: people to explain tiktoks to you. Just ask your most
Speaker 1: annoying friend. But the comments that Duo or Zaria was
Speaker 1: replying to here all had to do with Duo Lingo
Speaker 1: streaks or basically, did you use Duo Lingo today to
Speaker 1: preserve your however many day long streak of learning whichever language.
Speaker 1: It's a big incentive of using the app and always
Speaker 1: had been so. Users had made a ton of memes
Speaker 1: of the reminder push notifications that Duo Lingo would often
Speaker 1: send its users to remind them to do their daily
Speaker 1: lessons or lose their streak, and these notifications were presented
Speaker 1: somewhat menacingly by the supposedly friendly Duo the owl, and
Speaker 1: this led to the user generated meme Evil Duo Lingo Owl,
Speaker 1: a photoshop version of Duo holding a gun and saying
Speaker 1: something like the Duo Lingo owl when you haven't practiced
Speaker 1: in two days. It was pretty funny and it became
Speaker 1: a meme format for other stuff. But this meme became
Speaker 1: popular among Duo Lingo users all the way back in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen. I can confirm this because it definitely existed
Speaker 1: the summer that I failed to learn how to introduced
Speaker 1: myself in Swedish. But it took four full years until
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one for the Duo Lingo company via Zaria,
Speaker 1: to embrace this ethos as their mascot's actual personality. So again,
Speaker 1: Zaria is using raw material that was already there. Where
Speaker 1: social media managers like Amy Brown or Nathan Alabach had
Speaker 1: to create a personality for a legacy company, Zaria Parvez
Speaker 1: is taking existing memes and using her own creativity to
Speaker 1: amplify it for a relatively young company, and she gets
Speaker 1: a lot of support internally to do this. Zaria was
Speaker 1: in her early twenties when this began and was basically
Speaker 1: given free reign to turn Duo the Owl into a
Speaker 1: mascot suited TikTok sitcom agent of chaos, and, as she
Speaker 1: explains in our interview, the account's ever climbing presence seemed
Speaker 1: to boost user retention and daily use on the app itself,
Speaker 1: particularly among young people, because keep in mind that in
Speaker 1: the early twenty twenties, the vast majority of TikTok users
Speaker 1: were still teenagers and people in their early to mid twenties,
Speaker 1: and so particularly in twenty twenty one, to do well
Speaker 1: on TikTok was to uniquely corner a market of young people,
Speaker 1: and these young people on TikTok, from what at least
Speaker 1: initial conventional studies have reflected, were more willing to interact
Speaker 1: with a brand account on social media than the millennials
Speaker 1: and particularly gen Z Internet users of your were. And
Speaker 1: we've traced this throughout this series because even when a
Speaker 1: brand was attempting to act authentically even ten years earlier,
Speaker 1: you would very frequently see the comments flooded with silence
Speaker 1: brand memes. But by the time Zo Maria Parvez is
Speaker 1: acting as Duo the Owl, if a brand was coming
Speaker 1: off as authentically online seeming, there were very few calls
Speaker 1: of this nature. Because Duo was playing knowingly into a
Speaker 1: then four year old, originally fan made meme and represented
Speaker 1: an ostensibly wholesome company, most young users didn't seem to
Speaker 1: really have a problem with it. And another big difference
Speaker 1: was that these young users seemed well aware that the
Speaker 1: account was being run by one of them, making it
Speaker 1: easier to play into the fun. Going back to the
Speaker 1: character of Duo of the Owl, when Duo was characterized
Speaker 1: as violent, it was a brand focused kind of violent.
Speaker 1: He was willing to kill in order to keep Duo
Speaker 1: Lingo users' streaks going, and so in the early days
Speaker 1: of the account's virality, the shorthand for this was Spanish
Speaker 1: or Vanish, and the followers of the Duol account loved
Speaker 1: this and interacted with it very, very frequently, which only
Speaker 1: boosted its engagement in the algorithm. When the Duo Lingo
Speaker 1: account posted a vague threat to keep its members on
Speaker 1: their streaks, commenters would jokingly beg for their lives. Here
Speaker 1: are a few examples.
Speaker 6: Duo, it's the FBI release the families don't feel like
Speaker 6: it thinks, so Duo watches over my lessons more than
Speaker 6: the FBI watches over the most wanted criminals.
Speaker 1: Duo, it's hard being a single mom who works two
Speaker 1: jobs and the survive. But Zaria also switches things up
Speaker 1: every so often so that no one approach lasts long
Speaker 1: enough to burn out fans of the account, and that
Speaker 1: was hard on an Internet trend cycle that kept moving
Speaker 1: faster and faster. But I know why you're here. You're
Speaker 1: here to hear about the horny posts. So for your purposes,
Speaker 1: two things stand out. Not because Duo the Owl was
Speaker 1: the first to be a horny anthropomorphized character for from it,
Speaker 1: but Duo certainly went the furthest that a prominent brand
Speaker 1: had gone to this point. One we'll discuss in more
Speaker 1: detail in our interview, which was a collaboration between Duo
Speaker 1: Lingo and Fellow Down for whatever style social media brand
Speaker 1: scrub Daddy, which is a sponge company that genders sponges.
Speaker 1: I have a scrub mommy in my sink right now.
Speaker 1: No time we talk about it in the interview, but
Speaker 1: the two social media teams met up, and long story short,
Speaker 1: Duo Lingo and scrub Daddy decided to make it seem
Speaker 1: as if their two mascots had a baby together. I
Speaker 1: promised this will be the last very scary thing I
Speaker 1: described in this episode. So as this music is playing,
Speaker 1: it's accompanied by a slideshow of pictures of the scrub
Speaker 1: Daddy anthropomorphic sponge character holding Duo the Owl's shoulders as
Speaker 1: the Owl literally gives birth to owl shaped sponges at
Speaker 1: what cost? At what cost? And keep in mind this
Speaker 1: is fairly recent in social media history, so after the
Speaker 1: fall of the clickbait marketing zenith, years of BuzzFeed, Mashable,
Speaker 1: you name it. So if you want to go viral
Speaker 1: as a brand, now it's up to employees to capture
Speaker 1: the interests of users directly, not a random underpaid writer
Speaker 1: beholden to posting twenty clickbait pieces a day, and in
Speaker 1: order to do that, you need to do more. You
Speaker 1: can't just be horny. You have to be the horniest
Speaker 1: brand that's ever existed. The other example in Duo Lingo's case,
Speaker 1: which sort of served as a story arc, was Duo
Speaker 1: the Owls crush on Dua Lipa. Don't overthink it. The
Speaker 1: name sounds similar, and because TikTok is run by an opaque,
Speaker 1: uncannily people pleasing algorithm, a TikTok using trending audio that
Speaker 1: featured the photo of a current celebrity like Dua Lipa
Speaker 1: was bound to have a good start in the algorithm
Speaker 1: in terms of gaining subtraction, but it wasn't enough, and
Speaker 1: the Duo Lingo account escalated most memorably when they posted
Speaker 1: Duo photoshopped with Zaria's eyes and mouth onto Duo in
Speaker 1: a public pool, asking ew who pete.
Speaker 3: In the pool?
Speaker 1: Cut two a photo of Dua Lipa on the red carpet,
Speaker 1: captioned sorry it was me. Cut two Duo the Owl
Speaker 1: photoshopped as a mermaid swimming underwater, swimming in hot Girl piss.
Speaker 2: Yay, we did it.
Speaker 1: You listen to this series for three hours just so
Speaker 1: you could get to do a leapus piss. You could
Speaker 1: just watch porn. The wild thing here is that even
Speaker 1: when the approach seems deeply unhinged on Duo Lingo's behalf,
Speaker 1: Zaria is one of the few social media managers that
Speaker 1: can prove her approach leads to user retention. Data bears
Speaker 1: this out, but there is also proof from the comments
Speaker 1: in these same horny posts from Reddit after the Piss TikTok.
Speaker 3: Honestly, every time Duo shows up on my for you page,
Speaker 3: I log and do my owl homework for the day,
Speaker 3: so it seems like they're doing something right. Do aleapap
Speaker 3: jokes be damned.
Speaker 1: The Duo Lingo TikTok account hits a million followers in
Speaker 1: late twenty twenty one and now boasts nearly seventeen million followers,
Speaker 1: and none of this would have happened with the old
Speaker 1: vagaries of the influence overlap attempt that existed when Zaria
Speaker 1: began working there. Not only did other young TikTokers love
Speaker 1: the way that Duo interacted with trends, but they also
Speaker 1: clearly understood that behind this account was a social media
Speaker 1: manager working hard and hopefully having fun. A comment from
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two bears this out.
Speaker 3: If they fire you, I will never duoh another lingo
Speaker 3: and I literally have a one hundred and fifty nine
Speaker 3: day streak because of this account.
Speaker 1: And this also indicates a pretty significant generational shift from
Speaker 1: the time that we began covering this series. Our first
Speaker 1: interview was with Serenity Disco, who, when acting as Denny's
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Tumbler, had some Internet users recognize that
Speaker 1: they were a middle class person operating the account, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't assumed that they were. The way it is
Speaker 1: now where Zaria was and is catering to multiple generations
Speaker 1: of online users, and what seems indisputable based on available research,
Speaker 1: is that millennials were more willing to engage with targeted
Speaker 1: ads than Gen X, Gen Z was more willing to
Speaker 1: engage with targeted ads than millennials, and now Gen alpha
Speaker 1: is more willing to engage with targeted ads than Gen Z. Terrifying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm still constantly pursing out how young people are both
Speaker 1: uniquely attuned to the ways in which capitalism is dismantling
Speaker 1: their lives and are willing to engage with it when
Speaker 1: it's fun. But I'm no better. Gen X is the same,
Speaker 1: Gen Alpha is the same. And while I do believe
Speaker 1: that the children are our future, blah blah blah, the
Speaker 1: children are being raised by algorithms are generation made, and
Speaker 1: we don't know what we're doing, so it's a cycle
Speaker 1: that is bound to continue repeating. Okay, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the horny owl. By twenty twenty four, Duo Lingo was
Speaker 1: horny posting during Super Bowl ads, playing the following commercial
Speaker 1: and just try to guess what's happening based on the sound. Okay,
Speaker 1: you win one hundred dollars if you knew that was
Speaker 1: duo the owls but inflating until it popped into a
Speaker 1: second Duo the Owl and then just the words do
Speaker 1: your duo Lingo. While Zaria did not conceive this commercial directly.
Speaker 1: She made this possible, and as time passed, Zaria was
Speaker 1: given the funding to build out her own team and
Speaker 1: work with other ad agencies to build her vision for
Speaker 1: Duo to factor directly into the app itself. More recently,
Speaker 1: when a social media campaign with Duo is rolled out,
Speaker 1: it's reflected in the logo of the app. So if
Speaker 1: Duo is sick on TikTok, Duo is sick on the
Speaker 1: Dual Lingo app, and you can't really lose if you're
Speaker 1: the company here, because even if a user does not
Speaker 1: engage with the brand online, seeing an icon that's normally
Speaker 1: a smiling owl suddenly being a vomiting owl might make
Speaker 1: you stop in your tracks and remember to practice Spanish again.
Speaker 1: Most recently, as I mentioned earlier, this resulted in a
Speaker 1: stunt that had Duo the Owl and all the other
Speaker 1: expanded universe Duo Lingo characters murdered by a cyber truck,
Speaker 1: which got mainstream attention. That's genuinely hard to pull off
Speaker 1: these days when so many clickbait aggregators have fallen or
Speaker 1: pivoted to Nazism. I mean, Dua Lipa herself mourned Duo
Speaker 1: the Owl just a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 5: Duo the Owl is dead and pop star Dual is responding.
Speaker 5: On February eleventh, the language learning app Duolingo announced their mascot,
Speaker 5: Duo the Owl, was fatally hit by a Tesla cybertruck.
Speaker 5: In a statement, the app wrote, tbh, he probably died
Speaker 5: waiting for you to do your lesson, but what do
Speaker 5: we know. Duo Lingo also encouraged users to share their
Speaker 5: credit card numbers in the comments, adding at the end,
Speaker 5: we appreciate you respecting do Alipa's privacy at this time,
Speaker 5: and now do a Lipa is responding on X with
Speaker 5: her own words of mourning, writing till death Duo part,
Speaker 5: adding a broken heart.
Speaker 1: Emoji and if killing the mascot sounds familiar, it's because
Speaker 1: this kind of mirrors the nut Alert Mister Peanut death
Speaker 1: stunt of twenty twenty. There was also a Super Bowl
Speaker 1: commercial for this, complete with the kool Aid man's tears
Speaker 1: fertilizing the ground and growing a baby. Mister Peanut.
Speaker 3: Mister Peanut, he spent his life bringing people together.
Speaker 5: I know he'd be happy that we all hit together.
Speaker 1: Thankfully. Dual Lingo changes course quickly after killing off Duo
Speaker 1: the Owl and instead of doing a weird commercial, instead
Speaker 1: cross promoted between marketing and the Duo Lingo app itself
Speaker 1: to quote bring Duo back to life. This meant having
Speaker 1: users engage with the app in order to do so,
Speaker 1: and two weeks and a shitload of press later, Duo
Speaker 1: the Owl was back to normal. And that amount of
Speaker 1: cooperation across departments and a company is pretty unique by
Speaker 1: today's standards. So enough, horny setup, change your underwear. Let's
Speaker 1: hear it from the Green Owl's proxy herself. Up next,
Speaker 1: my conversation with Zaria Parves. Welcome back to sixteenth minute.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to take a moment to say I
Speaker 1: really appreciated the thread on the sixteenth minute reddit board
Speaker 1: from last week asking politely if I farted during the
Speaker 1: interview last week. And sorry to disappoint, but I am
Speaker 1: pretty sure that was a glitch on Apple podcasts. A
Speaker 1: likely story, I know. Anyways, here's my interview with Dual
Speaker 1: Lingo's own, Zaria Parvez. This interview has been edited for
Speaker 1: time and clarity.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Hi, my name is Zaria.
Speaker 4: I'm the global Senior Social Media Manager at due Lingo
Speaker 4: and I've been here for about five years. I handle
Speaker 4: all of our content with my amazing content team that
Speaker 4: you see on our TikTok our Instagram or YouTube.
Speaker 2: So really just in it and the weeds with social
Speaker 2: at due Lingo.
Speaker 4: What a lot of people don't know is actually Duelingo
Speaker 4: is my first job out of college. Yeah, so I
Speaker 4: did not job before this, which is kind of crazy,
Speaker 4: But I grew up in Portland to Oregon and I
Speaker 4: attended University of Oregon. I studied marketing there and my
Speaker 4: focus was actually brand strategy. Then the pandemic came around
Speaker 4: and I graduated, so I was like a twenty twenty
Speaker 4: grad and I knew I wanted a job in marketing,
Speaker 4: but I was seeing what was out there, and I think, like,
Speaker 4: for me, like my biggest thing is I really wanted
Speaker 4: to be like I always say, I work best in
Speaker 4: the shadows and in the preiphery, So like I wanted
Speaker 4: to be at a company that was kind of like
Speaker 4: still starting up with like their marketing, they weren't like
Speaker 4: number one in the game at the time, but also
Speaker 4: like a company that had a good ethos. So like
Speaker 4: that's kind of how I stumbled into like going to Pittsburgh,
Speaker 4: I guess from Portland and like finding dueling go and
Speaker 4: all of this was I just wanted to be at
Speaker 4: a company that was like inherently diverse, and I thought, hey,
Speaker 4: like a place that teaches languages sounds like a pretty
Speaker 4: diverse place to be. And they had a social media
Speaker 4: coordinator role open when I was starting, Like, I was
Speaker 4: interested in marketing, but I didn't know it was social
Speaker 4: and I was just more chasing the company versus the job.
Speaker 4: And I was like, I'm new, I'll figured it out
Speaker 4: and if it's for me, great, If not, we can
Speaker 4: always pivot. But yeah, that's a little bit about me.
Speaker 1: I hope this sounds like the compliment is intended to be.
Speaker 1: It makes so much sense that you're from Portland. It
Speaker 1: just really clarifies a lot. That makes me feel good
Speaker 1: because I miss organ every day. Well, in my experience
Speaker 1: in college, they weren't teaching the internet correctly or well,
Speaker 1: I'm curious, how did you get drawn to marketing and
Speaker 1: how is it taught to you versus what the industry
Speaker 1: ended up being.
Speaker 2: Like, that's such a cool question. I don't think I've
Speaker 2: ever been asked that before. I actually was in pre med.
Speaker 4: I like every other Pakistani kid that I was going
Speaker 4: to become a doctor and quickly learned one quarter in
Speaker 4: that I am not going to chemistry and it wasn't
Speaker 4: for me. But what I did really love about chemistry
Speaker 4: in general was like writing the lab reports. Like that
Speaker 4: for me was like, oh, this is fun, and like
Speaker 4: especially the last part that's always like explain why this
Speaker 4: matters in the world. And I think for me, like
Speaker 4: that was kind of a moment where I was like, Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm a writer, and like I'm failing my chem tests,
Speaker 4: but I'm doing well on lab reports, so maybe there's
Speaker 4: something here. And as people do in college, started exploring
Speaker 4: other things and just seeing what was out there, and
Speaker 4: advertising a university organ is huge because like White and
Speaker 4: Kennedy Nike, it like all comes from organ so I
Speaker 4: knew of it and I just like took one class
Speaker 4: one quarter and absolutely was like, Yeah, this is what
Speaker 4: I want to do.
Speaker 2: I can be creative and I can.
Speaker 4: Write, and I can create things and get paid fairly
Speaker 4: well for it, So like, yeah, why would I not
Speaker 4: do this? And at my heart and at my core
Speaker 4: even now, I still think I'm a writer. Like writing
Speaker 4: is my true joy, whether that's like comedy writing or
Speaker 4: like little captions or like the punchy lines that you
Speaker 4: see on Duo's tiktoks, or like long form marketing just
Speaker 4: kind of became like my whole personality, which is kind
Speaker 4: of cringe. But in college I was like part of
Speaker 4: like our ad team and like went to nationals and like.
Speaker 2: Created campaigns for like Wiener Schnitzel.
Speaker 4: And like Adobe, which is so random, very class president energy,
Speaker 4: but I just really fell in love with it. I
Speaker 4: loved the fact that it mixed art and science, and
Speaker 4: I loved the fact that it was just like it
Speaker 4: was just cool, like you could do cool things and
Speaker 4: create cool stuff and see it out in the world.
Speaker 2: But they did not teach social media.
Speaker 4: Like going back and looking at these campaigns I made,
Speaker 4: they were like, yeah, we'll activate maybe on TikTok, but
Speaker 4: social was like not there. I think what helped me
Speaker 4: stand out is I was just I loved it as
Speaker 4: a consumer, Like I was just on social and I
Speaker 4: always scared about my grids and how things looked, and
Speaker 4: that also, I think is kind of what set us
Speaker 4: up for success here at Duo in the sense where
Speaker 4: like I was kind of entering this job as like
Speaker 4: someone who just loves social media and like looking deeper
Speaker 4: into it versus like an advertiser who specializes in social media,
Speaker 4: Like it allowed me to not work as an advertiser
Speaker 4: and generally they just work as like a creator, which
Speaker 4: I think ultimately helped the brand because it allowed us
Speaker 4: to not be so caught up on like advertising things.
Speaker 1: I do think it's interesting how little you were taught
Speaker 1: about social media in your marketing class and now you
Speaker 1: are quite literally at the top of social media marketing
Speaker 1: because it wasn't necessarily what you learned at school. What
Speaker 1: was your relationship with the internet like growing up, What
Speaker 1: was your sort of flavor of being online growing up?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So I mean I don't remember a life without an internet,
Speaker 4: Like I feel like that's always been around me. And
Speaker 4: then I think the funniest thing is I actually wasn't
Speaker 4: allowed to have social media until I was a junior
Speaker 4: in high school.
Speaker 1: So did you secretly have it?
Speaker 2: End? Absolutely yes.
Speaker 4: So my favorite story is actually, when I was in
Speaker 4: third grade, YouTube was like the big thing, right, and
Speaker 4: so I actually got suspended for making a YouTube video
Speaker 4: that accidentally went viral and it was yeah, and it
Speaker 4: was about why students shouldn't be attending my strict Catholic school,
Speaker 4: and like I was like it was like, so like
Speaker 4: don't come here because a bit, but for some reason,
Speaker 4: it like blew up and I got called to the
Speaker 4: principal's office and I remember this so well, and she's like,
Speaker 4: in my dad was there, and my dad my mom
Speaker 4: and dad both works, and like I always went to
Speaker 4: like after school things like if my dad's there in
Speaker 4: the middle of the day, I'm like, I'm WoT. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I saw him and I was like, oh, but he
Speaker 4: wasn't like Matt, Like he was just sitting there neutral,
Speaker 4: So like, okay, what's going on? And our principals like,
Speaker 4: so we know you have a YouTube channel and I
Speaker 4: was like, oh god, Like I was more worried about
Speaker 4: her saying that my dad getting mad. And she's like,
Speaker 4: you had this one video and I was like what
Speaker 4: are you taught? And I was like and it was
Speaker 4: like such a nothing video to me, and she was
Speaker 4: like it under your name, Yeah, it was under the
Speaker 4: Mega Freakable.
Speaker 2: That was my Like okay.
Speaker 3: I was like what was the user?
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, And she was like we have like we're
Speaker 4: trying to fundraise for like this new school and like
Speaker 4: this has blown up and it's inappropriate because you're like
Speaker 4: bashing the school and the program whatever. And she's like,
Speaker 4: because of this, like we'll be giving you like a
Speaker 4: one day suspension. And my dad was like we were
Speaker 4: just like okay, like it was really neutral, and I
Speaker 4: was like, he's going to like give it to me
Speaker 4: after we leave this meeting.
Speaker 2: We walk out and he's like, well, at least you
Speaker 2: get a Monday off. And I was like, what is
Speaker 2: going on? Literally, and he was like he's like, he's like,
Speaker 2: I saw it.
Speaker 4: He's like, never make a YouTube video ever again and
Speaker 4: delete your account, which happened, but he was like, I
Speaker 4: don't see any problem with it. He's like, I'm glad
Speaker 4: for you. I'm glad that you used your voice. And
Speaker 4: I'm like, great, thank you. Oh oh yeah, that's so great.
Speaker 2: And that was in third grade.
Speaker 4: So I think like for me, like Duo's personality of
Speaker 4: like being unhinged, being out of pocket, like it's just
Speaker 4: kind of my personality in a way of like I've
Speaker 4: always probably said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing,
Speaker 4: and like working for a brand that has that persona
Speaker 4: made it really easy. But yeah, that was just kind
Speaker 4: of my my relationship with social has just been like
Speaker 4: I've always just been on it and used it and
Speaker 4: loved it.
Speaker 1: How does your relationship with social media kind of evolve
Speaker 1: as you're growing up.
Speaker 2: I loved it, like I was always on it.
Speaker 4: I cared about my Like getting my Instagram my junior
Speaker 4: year was like the biggest thing ever. I was like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, I finally have an account. Loved Twitter,
Speaker 4: had had the classic like mean girl Twitter moment with
Speaker 4: like you know, your middle school enemies and like all
Speaker 4: of that stuff. Going on social was like every part,
Speaker 4: Like that was what I did my free time. And
Speaker 4: it's like, I mean obviously other activities too, but like
Speaker 4: social was just always part of my life, like it
Speaker 4: was never That's why it was like never nothing. So
Speaker 4: like when I saw this, I was like, yeah, I
Speaker 4: could do social for a brand, Like how hard can
Speaker 4: it be? Like I know, like content basics, I know
Speaker 4: marketing basics, Like how hard can it be to bring
Speaker 4: the expertise that I know personally with professional work, which
Speaker 4: is a little naive but maybe I needed.
Speaker 2: That to have that confidence.
Speaker 1: So Okay, so you get this job right out of college?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I was in Portland, but then I moved
Speaker 4: on my own because I just wanted to move to
Speaker 4: Pittsburgh in August of twenty twenty, but our office didn't
Speaker 4: open until September of twenty twenty one, when like we
Speaker 4: had people coming in and that's actually when our like
Speaker 4: TikTok really took off. So like I was doing like
Speaker 4: so like quote unquote boring social work for Duo too
Speaker 4: for a year, Like I was just figuring out like
Speaker 4: what it even means to be working a nine to
Speaker 4: five and what corporate life is.
Speaker 1: How do people talk about duo online because I feel
Speaker 1: like I've been seeing duo with the gun for years.
Speaker 4: Yes, when we started the memes exist, we did not
Speaker 4: acknowledge them. Like it was very like brand safety, we
Speaker 4: can't say that we can't do that, or language learning
Speaker 4: app that means we have to have proper punctuation because
Speaker 4: people are gonna look.
Speaker 2: To us blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: Like it was very much that way, and I mean
Speaker 4: I was Neil was like, yeah, you're right, Like who
Speaker 4: am I to like change that? Like I'm just here
Speaker 4: to clock and clock out create the content. So that's
Speaker 4: kind of how it started.
Speaker 1: So that was that was like the policy at the time, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that's just what it was.
Speaker 4: I also wasn't like we need to be doing this,
Speaker 4: Like I didn't see it at that time because I
Speaker 4: was still learning like just how to navigate it. I
Speaker 4: think the switch kind of happened when that original like
Speaker 4: learn Italian on TikTok and all that stuff started coming
Speaker 4: out and it wasn't doing that well. And that was
Speaker 4: like the first time we actually put like investment into
Speaker 4: like a social platform, so like money and budget were
Speaker 4: being put behind that, and they were like, yeah, we
Speaker 4: need to cut this, like this is not worth our spend,
Speaker 4: and it got to the point where I see I
Speaker 4: was like TikTok's on a company priority, like we don't
Speaker 4: into doing this. And I remember at that point kind
Speaker 4: of feeling like no, like TikTok still like works, We're
Speaker 4: just doing it wrong. And I think even that was
Speaker 4: like a year into my career where I was like
Speaker 4: able to build more of a voice and build like
Speaker 4: more of an understanding of our brand and like just
Speaker 4: kind of absorb what it is to like work in
Speaker 4: social And so then to my boss.
Speaker 2: She stopped that.
Speaker 4: We're like Okay, that's fine, Maybe that's just not the
Speaker 4: way to go about it my boss. We got back
Speaker 4: into the office and this was my first day actually
Speaker 4: in the office during the pandemic, after the pandemic pandemic.
Speaker 4: So I walk in and this suit is like in
Speaker 4: this back corner and this suit is actually was first
Speaker 4: made just for like hr like recruiting events, like just
Speaker 4: kind of internal things. It was never posted ever on
Speaker 4: any of our platforms. I was like, that's weird, Like
Speaker 4: why is there just like an owl suit sitting by
Speaker 4: the market. Like it looked weird, So we see it,
Speaker 4: and I like by the time, like I was just
Speaker 4: on social and I was like, oh, like there's like
Speaker 4: this trend that's like how am I supposed to like live, laugh,
Speaker 4: love in these conditions? And I'm like I literally feel
Speaker 4: like that right now, Like this is like staring at me.
Speaker 4: I'm in marketing in like a corporate office, and it's
Speaker 4: just like whatever. And I was taught telling my boss,
Speaker 4: I was like, gonna be funny if we like filmed
Speaker 4: a TikTok of like me sitting here working and like
Speaker 4: this owl looking at me being like how am I
Speaker 4: supposed to live left love in these conditions?
Speaker 2: And she's like, yeah, that's funny. And I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's funny. Can you actually film me?
Speaker 4: And I think I have an idea here, and so
Speaker 4: she's like sure, So she grabbed her phone and we
Speaker 4: just put like the duo suit behind me and we
Speaker 4: filmed it with that audio and we posted it and
Speaker 4: it went stupid viral and that was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: like there is something here with this suit and the comedy,
Speaker 4: and like since that day, like five like four years ago,
Speaker 4: like it's just been iterating and iterating and iterating on
Speaker 4: that court insight that like that suit is just ridiculous
Speaker 4: and it's almost like a form of satire because marketing
Speaker 4: was so fresh at Duelingo at that point, like we
Speaker 4: didn't have these systems even in place to like get
Speaker 4: marketing checks or like social checks and like we're an
Speaker 4: engineering first org. Like respectfully, they didn't care about marketing
Speaker 4: at that point, like we were not a priority team, like,
Speaker 4: which is fine, Like that's just how it was.
Speaker 2: That's how it was.
Speaker 4: But because there was it was a start up vibe
Speaker 4: and no one really cared. We had free rein to
Speaker 4: kind of just do whatever.
Speaker 1: Seeing like the other sort of weird approaches to two
Speaker 1: brands had you seen, like the Wendy's Twitter back in
Speaker 1: the day, was the stuff you were familiar with? Was
Speaker 1: was there any inspiration you were taking from past approaches?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think, I mean I think everyone knew about
Speaker 4: Wendy's Twitter, like obviously I think for me though, it
Speaker 4: was never as an Internet person, I didn't care about
Speaker 4: brand Twitter or like brand talk. I guess now is
Speaker 4: what I like and like when I grew like that
Speaker 4: was not who I was following, Like yeah, and I
Speaker 4: would hear the couple of clapbacks from Wendy, It's like
Speaker 4: that one's super viral, But it was never like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is my source of inspiration. I think more of
Speaker 4: what was my source of inspiration for social and how
Speaker 4: I wanted to build duo on like TikTok particularly, was
Speaker 4: the success the character has had on the app, and
Speaker 4: like the funny sentences or like the things people are
Speaker 4: already sharing. And I actually think a lot of brands
Speaker 4: do have memes already made about them. They're just scartlean and.
Speaker 2: Like we were.
Speaker 4: But like my whole thing was like okay, like we've
Speaker 4: had a couple of Twitter moments that community has made,
Speaker 4: like do it with a gun, like how do I
Speaker 4: bring that to life on TikTok, Like that was my
Speaker 4: job was translating that. So I think my inspiration was
Speaker 4: actually more of like how our designers and product team
Speaker 4: and content team built our app to be like naturally
Speaker 4: gamified and interesting and getting people like make fan art
Speaker 4: about it, or like getting people to like talk about
Speaker 4: the different dynamics of the characters, like there's something there
Speaker 4: if like people are organically talking about a brand, because
Speaker 4: no one really does that on social, like at least
Speaker 4: I still don't. I mean, I do a little bit
Speaker 4: for my job outside of that, Like I feel like
Speaker 4: if I didn't work in marketing, I probably would not
Speaker 4: care about brands on social. So that was really cool
Speaker 4: to me that people were they cared about this brand
Speaker 4: for some reason.
Speaker 1: When you start getting kind of like a longer leash
Speaker 1: to try weirder stuff, it seems like the whole office
Speaker 1: is on board and is like regularly cast and stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I always say that, Like the number one
Speaker 4: person that believe me was obviously my boss who filmed
Speaker 4: the first video, and then Mark Pavoc, who wore the
Speaker 4: duo suit for me.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so is it the is it the same guy.
Speaker 4: It changes now now that our team's grown and evolved.
Speaker 4: We like higher dancers and stuff because Mark does have
Speaker 4: a full time job at due Lingo.
Speaker 2: That's not doing that before everything blew up.
Speaker 4: Or I was like I had these ideas, but like
Speaker 4: no one wants to film with me, Like can you
Speaker 4: because I just know you, like from just working.
Speaker 2: Together, and he was like, yeah, of course, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I feel like I literally owe my career to him,
Speaker 4: and like MICHAELA who was my first boss, because they
Speaker 4: believed in me and they did it. And then the
Speaker 4: video started popping off and doing well. And the other
Speaker 4: person that really believed in me was our legal uh
Speaker 4: legal Steve was like I love what you're doing on TikTok,
Speaker 4: Like here's some trends I see, or here's some things
Speaker 4: we can do, or like how do we make this
Speaker 4: like streamline? So it wasn't like I think that's what's
Speaker 4: special about duos because it was so small and startupy.
Speaker 4: It never had these like social versus legal or social
Speaker 4: versus like. It was never that energy and because we
Speaker 4: started off so viral early on, we've kind of just
Speaker 4: kept that.
Speaker 2: Energy to never exists because we never knew a world
Speaker 2: where that exis.
Speaker 1: Does the staff their skew younger generally?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean yeah, we definitely do have some like
Speaker 4: more seasoned marketing people, but they're very like we hired
Speaker 4: a sow like because I was the only social coordinator
Speaker 4: at the time, Like, we hired you because we know
Speaker 4: we're bad at this and we need to be better
Speaker 4: at it, so please do it. Like that was the mentality.
Speaker 4: And then as I hired my team out, I think
Speaker 4: I'm the eldest, and I'm like it's crazy because I'm
Speaker 4: still used being the youngest, but like I was youngest
Speaker 4: on the team and now I'm twenty seven, and like
Speaker 4: our team spans from like twenty one to twenty four,
Speaker 4: so like it's a very young team. But we also
Speaker 4: have like like millennials as well on our team that
Speaker 4: like help us with like other things. So it's like
Speaker 4: we kind of just all use our assets as like
Speaker 4: across age ranges. I actually really need, like my role
Speaker 4: managers like expertise and like how do you navigate a
Speaker 4: strategy and sell it? Like how do you show that
Speaker 4: like the impact I have actually matters? It's like that's important,
Speaker 4: right then I also need like the twenty year old
Speaker 4: on my team of like what does what does Jen
Speaker 4: alpha in doo now? Because like I'm not gen Alpha
Speaker 4: and like to help bring that to life. So I
Speaker 4: think everyone just plays their part in a really different way.
Speaker 4: So as you know, I love writing, so I always
Speaker 4: believe that, like, yes, humans were natural storytellers, and like
Speaker 4: that is what brands want to do. But we're so
Speaker 4: obsessed with telling our own story that we're not listening
Speaker 4: I guess to the stories that like other people are saying,
Speaker 4: which sounds like so like bad da, but like other stories,
Speaker 4: like people are puttingduo with a gun, Like that's a
Speaker 4: story too, all right, So like for me, it's like yeah, exactly,
Speaker 4: And I think that for me was like how do
Speaker 4: I build almost a sitcom around this character and show
Speaker 4: these different storylines? And like we all have the tropes, right,
Speaker 4: Like there's the lover, there's the enemy, there's the like
Speaker 4: hero's journey, there's the struggle, there's the things they love,
Speaker 4: the things they hate, and like why can't brands have that,
Speaker 4: especially when you have a character involved, Like yeah, like
Speaker 4: I'm going to do it, and the only way to
Speaker 4: do it is to just keep exposing the audience to it,
Speaker 4: so like that was like where du Alipa came from,
Speaker 4: and the insight is just like Duelingo just sounds like
Speaker 4: du Alipa, So we're.
Speaker 1: Like dumb people are saying that anyways.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and she's hot, so we're like perfect, that's
Speaker 4: who Like Duo is going to be upset, like that's
Speaker 4: his love interest or like just kind of integrating the
Speaker 4: way that we know how to tell stories as humans
Speaker 4: or the stories that we enjoy and just finding the
Speaker 4: pieces that need to be filled and figuring out who
Speaker 4: those are was like, I think kind of how we
Speaker 4: built our strategy around it.
Speaker 1: And has there been any sort of pitch that you've
Speaker 1: experienced pushback on?
Speaker 2: Oh all the time.
Speaker 4: Actually, Like the scrub Daddy video, our CEO messaged me
Speaker 4: to take it down, but it already I was like,
Speaker 4: it already made us around striking, I'll take it down.
Speaker 1: Is the original not of because I remember it's not yea,
Speaker 1: I guess the different one.
Speaker 3: So okay.
Speaker 2: The story around this was.
Speaker 4: Something I was trying to do at that stage in
Speaker 4: my career, was like, how do I find more like
Speaker 4: minded like brands and social teams to like kind of
Speaker 4: amplify our presence, like as just being content creators. And
Speaker 4: the scrub Daddy team was a team that I really
Speaker 4: looked up to. They made really funny content and it
Speaker 4: literally was just like, hey, guys, do you guys want
Speaker 4: to do like a free content club, Like we'll bring
Speaker 4: the duo suit, you bring the scrib Daddy suit, come
Speaker 4: to the office, we'll create stuff.
Speaker 2: We're like, all right, this is like what we want
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 4: And then they were like, oh, we created these cute
Speaker 4: little duo sponges and I was like, oh, that's are
Speaker 4: cute babies.
Speaker 2: And that was kind of it.
Speaker 4: And we were creating content and I was like, guys,
Speaker 4: what if like I've been seeing this like pregnancy like
Speaker 4: TikTok going off. I don't know, Like it was so crazy,
Speaker 4: very tradwife kind of stuff, and I was like, what
Speaker 4: if we use this glad you came with this video
Speaker 4: and they were like, yeah, yeah, why not. So we
Speaker 4: like filmed it, we put it up, we posted it,
Speaker 4: and it blew up, and I think, like for us,
Speaker 4: and this is actually also in a sense happened with
Speaker 4: the Dead Duo.
Speaker 2: We kind of forget like how attached people are.
Speaker 4: To duo that like we're so lost in the sauce
Speaker 4: sometimes that we're like, yeah, we'll posted an ogle viral.
Speaker 4: Well I guess like maybe I won't even go that
Speaker 4: far or maybe maybe a million views, And then people
Speaker 4: were like no, no, no, we like this, and now
Speaker 4: it's like lore. When we posted that, it stayed up
Speaker 4: for like four hours and our c I was like, guys,
Speaker 4: we cannot be doing this. And I was like, okay, great,
Speaker 4: I'll take it down. However, what do you not like
Speaker 4: about it? He's like the visuals weird, but like he's like,
Speaker 4: more than that, the glad you came makes it like
Speaker 4: really weird. So I was like, okay, what if I
Speaker 4: repost it, but just don't add that part to the top,
Speaker 4: like the glad you came and change the audio And
Speaker 4: he's like, okay, fine. Like it's always a negotiation for
Speaker 4: like these high risk moments, and it's never a like
Speaker 4: take it down, you're in trouble. How dare you do
Speaker 4: this to our brand? Like it's not punishment. It's like
Speaker 4: we're iterating and learning, and the only way you know
Speaker 4: where the line is until you cross it on social
Speaker 4: because social changes every day. Honestly, like the people that
Speaker 4: are most upset about duo things or marketers like usually
Speaker 4: are And that's where we were like, well, who are
Speaker 4: we prioritizing, Like if we see this negative sentiment going up,
Speaker 4: like who's driving this? And ninety percent of the time
Speaker 4: it's someone who works in marketing that's just like upset
Speaker 4: about us not having the clear brand guidelines and strategy
Speaker 4: and things that we've all learned to do, while our
Speaker 4: audience is like, we love it and we're getting new users,
Speaker 4: so I'm like, our priority is always going to be
Speaker 4: our new users and new business while like obviously like
Speaker 4: we love marketers and want them to enjoy what we're doing.
Speaker 2: But like when we.
Speaker 4: Prioritize, like how we assess risk, its goal is going
Speaker 4: to have like our users first. I think what was
Speaker 4: cool is like we have how did you hear about
Speaker 4: a survey which before just existed as an onboarding survey
Speaker 4: when you joined, and it would say like did you
Speaker 4: learn about.
Speaker 2: Us from friends, from family, from Google? Whatever?
Speaker 4: And as our TikTok started blowing up, we were like,
Speaker 4: what if we just add TikTok to that and see
Speaker 4: like who knows? Because at the time we were like impressions,
Speaker 4: great brand awareness done, and then it was like maybe
Speaker 4: there is a tie, and then we just added TikTok
Speaker 4: and every time we had a viral video, like a
Speaker 4: video over a million views, bam, a spike any users, bam.
Speaker 4: It would keep like we would keep seeing it. And
Speaker 4: then that's also when a sl team senior leadership was
Speaker 4: like let them cook. And that's literally what it's been like,
Speaker 4: which is so awesome. And I think the origin stories
Speaker 4: of how we almost worked backwards like has worked out well.
Speaker 4: And now it's funny because you'll see like SLT pitch ideas.
Speaker 2: To us and they're like will they accept it?
Speaker 4: Like will they green light it, which is like different
Speaker 4: than like a lot of social teams where they're hoping
Speaker 4: that like their senior leadership like allows them to post
Speaker 4: what they want to post.
Speaker 1: Right, you have the power, Yeah, exactly, And we'll be
Speaker 1: right back with more. Zaria Parvez and Horny Little Owl.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I'm in the middle of
Speaker 1: reading that new tell All memoir about working high up
Speaker 1: at Facebook, and guys, I think this Mark Zuckerberg guy
Speaker 1: might be kind of a bad fella. Mark.
Speaker 3: He's wired in Sorry, he's wired in? Yes, about now
Speaker 3: you're still wired in?
Speaker 1: Where's the rest of my interview with Zaria Parvez.
Speaker 4: A big part of my like what I've been working
Speaker 4: on honestly, like this past half and like this year
Speaker 4: is evolving our brand and what does that look like.
Speaker 2: So we actually started like a writer's room.
Speaker 4: Where I brought in people who were like I've always
Speaker 4: enjoyed their work, love them, think they're smart, and they
Speaker 4: have no care about dueling. Go like, let like come
Speaker 4: in and like just tell me, like how you would
Speaker 4: like how would you advertise due lingo music? And like
Speaker 4: I gave pretty much gave them no context, barely any
Speaker 4: brief just to see what they would come out with. Glean,
Speaker 4: I like, never want unhinged to just be like our crutch.
Speaker 4: So I like, for me, it's like we should be
Speaker 4: unhinged to be funny, Like it shouldn't just be like
Speaker 4: showing duos, but just to get engagement, Like it needs
Speaker 4: to have like a reason why we're being unhinged, because
Speaker 4: that makes it that just makes a joke smarter and funnier.
Speaker 4: WHOA like you guys just put duos but on national
Speaker 4: TV like as brands as we try to strategize everything
Speaker 4: so much, and like humans don't think in strategy, Like
Speaker 4: some of these things are serendipitous and good moments. And
Speaker 4: like I always say, it was like seventy five percent
Speaker 4: luck honestly that it took off, and then like, what's
Speaker 4: seventy five was twenty Yeah, twenty five. I'm like, we're
Speaker 4: a good one hundred and then twenty five.
Speaker 1: Percent of like just into marketing I know, right well,
Speaker 1: I was like I need to do go math, but.
Speaker 4: Like twenty five percent of just like us optimizing it
Speaker 4: and like leaning in and like taking advantage of the
Speaker 4: moment because it's so sad when I see like something
Speaker 4: viral that a brand can let land, like you know,
Speaker 4: lean into and they don't, And I'm like, just take
Speaker 4: advantage of it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think that.
Speaker 4: That's the cool part about it is we were allowed
Speaker 4: to take advantage of that moment.
Speaker 1: So how did dead duo so but that that sounded
Speaker 1: like a sort of a full company collaboration.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So essentially what happened was, as I mentioned a
Speaker 4: little bit earlier, every maybe like four months, the product
Speaker 4: team does an app icon change where the normal duo
Speaker 4: green owl on your phone changes to a different emotion
Speaker 4: or something just something different, And the whole point is
Speaker 4: for you to be on your phone and you're so
Speaker 4: used to seeing that green bird and all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: like it's sick and there's like a big booger coming
Speaker 4: out and you're like, ea, what is that? And that
Speaker 4: resurrects new users. Something we realized though, is like when
Speaker 4: it's an emotion, like we did it with sick, do
Speaker 4: we did it with like a wrinkly face like old
Speaker 4: looking duo that when it has a user emotion or something,
Speaker 4: people talk a lot about it on social. Then we
Speaker 4: were like, Okay, this works well when social works with product.
Speaker 4: Next time around, let's build another campaign and again maybe
Speaker 4: it'll do well like whatever. And what happened is product
Speaker 4: ab tests two things. So they had a debt duo
Speaker 4: and I think they had like a crying duo. They
Speaker 4: both kind of came out the same like marketing like,
Speaker 4: since you already kind of did a campaign before, what
Speaker 4: do you want to do?
Speaker 2: Like for us, it's kind of the same.
Speaker 4: And I was like, I think we should do debt
Speaker 4: duo because it's an emotion, like people can react and
Speaker 4: relate to it. And then they'll probably post about it
Speaker 4: and we can actually build a storyline around. And originally
Speaker 4: it was just supposed to be four posts. He died,
Speaker 4: we announce his death, show the funeral cause of death,
Speaker 4: then we resurrect him and that and the whole brand
Speaker 4: messaging behind that was to be like Duo would fake
Speaker 4: his own death just for you to do your lesson,
Speaker 4: Like there's nothing this bird won't do for you to
Speaker 4: just open your damn phone.
Speaker 2: So we posted this fake pr state and it blew up, like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: virality beyond I've ever seen.
Speaker 4: And I think being in Pittsburgh, you're kind of in
Speaker 4: your own little like bubble because you're not in New York,
Speaker 4: you're not on LA, you're not in these big cities.
Speaker 4: When we were like, oh, we were going to post
Speaker 4: just like the funeral video tomorrow, but we should post
Speaker 4: it now like people want answers, And so then we
Speaker 4: post the funeral video and then we're like, wait, what
Speaker 4: if we like also kill the other characters and like
Speaker 4: say they're also debt, and like that's like how it
Speaker 4: kind of kept building, like the narrative, like these posts
Speaker 4: sort of entering that weren't part of our original social
Speaker 4: plan and we're like, oh, dang, we really did build
Speaker 4: an icon and we killed him and people cared, and
Speaker 4: I think for us that was a realization moment too.
Speaker 2: Of like what did we just do?
Speaker 4: And so like that was that was really fun and
Speaker 4: we've just we got to work with different team members
Speaker 4: to just bring it to life in different ways, and
Speaker 4: it was it was such a joy.
Speaker 2: It was like one of my highlights of my career
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason you went to do Olingo is
Speaker 1: because it was a company that aligned with your values,
Speaker 1: which I know, when we're talking about marketing and advertising general,
Speaker 1: that is a mine field to find a place that
Speaker 1: you feel good about. Yeah, and now, just having been
Speaker 1: in advertising your entire professional life, what are your feelings
Speaker 1: on that? How have you seen that sort of manifest
Speaker 1: in other areas of this industry.
Speaker 4: So I was able to internet the advertising agency my
Speaker 4: junior year summer. I think the first reaction I had
Speaker 4: was like, oh, it's like really white and like I
Speaker 4: grew up like very proudly Pakistani, very proudly Muslim. Like
Speaker 4: it was just such a different lifestyle, I think, and
Speaker 4: it was really weird to like walk into a space
Speaker 4: where like new York City's one of the most diverse
Speaker 4: cities right ever in the world, and then you just
Speaker 4: walk in and you're like, there's literally no one that
Speaker 4: looks like me. And I think that's also like candidly,
Speaker 4: a lot of Muslims also don't enter communications fields because
Speaker 4: naturally most of us tend to be kids of immigrants,
Speaker 4: and immigrants care about sciences and arts and not arts, sorry,
Speaker 4: not art, but like sciences and math, and so like
Speaker 4: a lot of people come engineers and doctors, and like
Speaker 4: we don't enter communications fields. And then we ask, hey,
Speaker 4: like why are Muslims being like badly represented in media,
Speaker 4: and like because none of us are there, Like we're
Speaker 4: not prioritizing like being in these spaces, and that's going
Speaker 4: to have ramifications. And so for me, like that was
Speaker 4: kind of a big wake up call during like this
Speaker 4: experience and like nothing like happened.
Speaker 2: It just felt weird.
Speaker 4: And my entire thesis in college that I was writing
Speaker 4: for graduation was actually about like a playbook of how
Speaker 4: to advertise to Muslims and communicate with Muslims and.
Speaker 2: Like what does that look like?
Speaker 4: So part of that playbook was like all about like
Speaker 4: diversity marketing, in a sense and like what's the right
Speaker 4: appropriate way to go about it?
Speaker 2: But also like a part of us.
Speaker 4: Like exploring like who are like the five Muslims in
Speaker 4: marketing because I can barely find any and interviewing them,
Speaker 4: being like how did you end up here?
Speaker 2: And like what is the situation?
Speaker 4: And like now in my five years, I've seen it
Speaker 4: grow and expand and I'm so glad to see that
Speaker 4: there's more diversity there. But like it was just a
Speaker 4: really interesting wake up call for me where I was like,
Speaker 4: I I feel happy and most creative in places that
Speaker 4: I feel safe, and so like that's where kind of
Speaker 4: how do lingo fit into the narrative? Where I was like,
Speaker 4: this seems like a company that has to be inherently
Speaker 4: diverse because you need people to speak different languages and
Speaker 4: usually people who speak different languages come from different parts
Speaker 4: of the world and have to be part of this mission.
Speaker 4: And then the co founders themselves are both immigrants. So
Speaker 4: it was just like so many levels of oh, this
Speaker 4: makes sense, And like I remember when I accepted the job,
Speaker 4: doing marketing was not anything, and I remember like I
Speaker 4: was a top performer at University of Oregon. It was
Speaker 4: like You're gonna go to Nike, you and know Addin
Speaker 4: Kennedy and do all this stuff. And I remember accepting
Speaker 4: it and somebody like straight up being like that was
Speaker 4: the biggest mistake you've ever done, Like you should not,
Speaker 4: Like why are you doing that?
Speaker 2: Like why do you give up an agency?
Speaker 4: Like because I had an agency offer at the time,
Speaker 4: and it was like a whole thing, and I was
Speaker 4: like stressed, Like I was like, did I just like
Speaker 4: throw in my career?
Speaker 2: Like I don't even know what I'm doing.
Speaker 4: But I just something in my gut just felt safe there,
Speaker 4: Like talking to the people in the interview process, I
Speaker 4: was like, this is just what I want to do,
Speaker 4: and I'm just going to try it and do it.
Speaker 4: And it worked out that safety feeling also working in
Speaker 4: a place where you just feel comfortable, like I was
Speaker 4: allowed to be myself, which means I was allowed to
Speaker 4: be unhinged and weird, which means I was allowed to
Speaker 4: post these things. Like it creates an environment of like
Speaker 4: safety and creativity and like bringing in different ways of
Speaker 4: thinking and like I always say, like being an immigrant kid,
Speaker 4: like I was a third culture kid. I knew how
Speaker 4: to like be wide enough for my white friends at
Speaker 4: school and be broad enough for my parents at home,
Speaker 4: and like navigate literally jumping between different audiences and different
Speaker 4: groups and different people. And that's what you have to
Speaker 4: do in marketing. You have to know how to talk
Speaker 4: to different people in their own language. So like third
Speaker 4: culture kids are like set up for this, they just
Speaker 4: need this space and the opportunity to do it. So
Speaker 4: like that's also why I think Dueling Go is so successful,
Speaker 4: because we focused on that third culture energy in that space,
Speaker 4: and like sometimes you'll still see like Tiktoks and Earth
Speaker 4: that were reaching a new audience. It's still viral because
Speaker 4: it's like stuff that I know, or like I'm really
Speaker 4: intentional about our team, Like I want our team to
Speaker 4: be as diverse as possible, and like we have people
Speaker 4: from all walks of life, all backgrounds. No one on
Speaker 4: my content team actually as a traditional marketing background, or
Speaker 4: if they do, it's like very lightly touched.
Speaker 2: Our production assistant, for example, saw.
Speaker 4: Her volunteering somewhere and I was like, I just like
Speaker 4: the way you work with like the systems of the
Speaker 4: people here.
Speaker 2: I think you could be a great PA. Would you
Speaker 2: like to like join?
Speaker 4: So like she does that, which is like crazy, even
Speaker 4: like our content designer she got rejected from douling Go
Speaker 4: from douling Goo's illustration and design team, and I was like, cool,
Speaker 4: I'll take you, and like it was like stuff like
Speaker 4: that where it's just like I love the underdogs because
Speaker 4: I think those stories are like the people who try
Speaker 4: the hardest, who want to do the best and just
Speaker 4: never got the opportunity to do it for me, Like
Speaker 4: even brands that like because I'm so part of gen
Speaker 4: Z and like brands that I like, I'm actually not
Speaker 4: a brand talk person in general, Like I'm like, I
Speaker 4: work on this, I don't want to see it outside
Speaker 4: of it. But like any brands that I do fallow
Speaker 4: where like either I really care about their founders ethos
Speaker 4: or like you know, it's just more like there's some
Speaker 4: responsibility or accountability there that feels like they care and
Speaker 4: you can't about it and people can see right through
Speaker 4: it when it's not the.
Speaker 1: Last thing I wanted to talk about burnout and protecting yourself. Yes,
Speaker 1: how do you've managed that? And I know that no
Speaker 1: one has the answer, but I'm curious how you've had
Speaker 1: to sort of manage that throughout your career.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so for me. I.
Speaker 4: I am so grateful that I was able to skyrocket
Speaker 4: to so much success so early on. Like I remember
Speaker 4: when I got four of thirty or thirty at like
Speaker 4: twenty two years old. I was like, whoa, I'm not
Speaker 4: just saying that to be like eh, eh, include, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, but like it was just.
Speaker 2: It felt really surreal.
Speaker 4: But the drawback of that was like I don't think
Speaker 4: I got the opportunity to make mistakes because every mistake
Speaker 4: I made was in public, and I don't think it's
Speaker 4: anyone's fault, Like it like it's not like, oh, do
Speaker 4: overwork to me or like I did this, Like it
Speaker 4: was just the reality of this situation, and like, I'm
Speaker 4: glad I took ownership of the world. I'm glad I
Speaker 4: stood up and said, hey, that was me that created it.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, like that created this mental
Speaker 4: load on myself to the point where I actually took
Speaker 4: a medical leave last year for like five months of
Speaker 4: just like sorry, not five months, five weeks.
Speaker 2: I wish it was five months.
Speaker 4: And I remember telling my boss. I was like, I'm
Speaker 4: like not well, like I feel anxious coming into the office.
Speaker 4: I'm scared of something flopping I'm scared of like what
Speaker 4: people will say about me, Like I don't want my
Speaker 4: face being seen anywhere I get exactly like and that's
Speaker 4: not me. Like I feel very fortunate my entire life.
Speaker 4: I've never actually had like crazy, any like mental health issues,
Speaker 4: and I was happy with like who I was and
Speaker 4: what I wanted to do. And I was like, I'm
Speaker 4: just burnt out and I just need time away from
Speaker 4: the spotlight, Like I just need a break to reset
Speaker 4: and recharge. And I'm lucky I'm at a place that
Speaker 4: like allowed that and supported that, and like everyone knew.
Speaker 4: I wrote about it too, like I said, I loved writing.
Speaker 4: I wrote about it on my LinkedIn and I shared it,
Speaker 4: and it was it was one of those things where
Speaker 4: like as social managers, like we're always expected to wear
Speaker 4: so many hats that like at some point that's get
Speaker 4: heavy and it's like I can't, I can't do this.
Speaker 4: I came back and I remember my biggest thing was
Speaker 4: like I just never I never want to feel burnout,
Speaker 4: and I never want to make other people feel burnout
Speaker 4: around me, especially my team after going through what I
Speaker 4: went through. And I think what I really hang on too,
Speaker 4: is like creativity ebbs and flows, and like we need
Speaker 4: to be mindful of that. If if you want impact,
Speaker 4: you have to have those moments of like ebbs. You
Speaker 4: have to be okay with, like not posting stuff for
Speaker 4: a couple of weeks. You have to be okay with
Speaker 4: like people saying I need time off, or hey I
Speaker 4: need to work leave work early, or hey, I need
Speaker 4: to work from home today, Like this is overwhelming, Like
Speaker 4: that needs to be okay and like accepted in part
Speaker 4: of your strategy and part of your team structure. So no,
Speaker 4: I don't have a cure to burn out, but I
Speaker 4: think for me, that's what I really try to do
Speaker 4: of like, I am very aware of it, and I
Speaker 4: just try to find moments of like I never want
Speaker 4: you to feel like all you are to meies like
Speaker 4: an impression generator, Like feel creative when you feel creative,
Speaker 4: and let's figure out how you can work at it.
Speaker 4: That's kind of how I've been approaching it. I don't
Speaker 4: know if it's the right way or the wrong way,
Speaker 4: but it's working relatively. So some quarters are going to
Speaker 4: be great and some aren't. And like, not everyone is
Speaker 4: meant to go viral, and if they were, then like
Speaker 4: virality wouldn't exist like, that's just part of the cycle
Speaker 4: of the Internet and life. So as more gen z
Speaker 4: become role managers who have been through the ringer like
Speaker 4: how they act and behave and hopefully prevent burnout.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much again, Tazaria for her time and
Speaker 1: her work. I want her to be a comedy writer
Speaker 1: so bad. Follow her at the links in the description.
Speaker 1: And with that, dear listener, we emerge from the sacred
Speaker 1: wood of sentient brand marketing on social media. And where
Speaker 1: does this leave us? I don't know, honestly. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: very grateful to the marketing professionals and just kind people
Speaker 1: who lent their time and experience to make this series possible.
Speaker 1: It still does give me some uneasy about the future
Speaker 1: of what marketing is going to look like on the Internet,
Speaker 1: and as some listeners were right to point out, representing
Speaker 1: a company online that is very often cloud chasing on
Speaker 1: Internet trends can lead and often does lead to something
Speaker 1: called digital blackface, which is defined by CNN's John Blake
Speaker 1: as quote a practice where white people co opt online
Speaker 1: expressions of black imagery, slang, catchphrases, or culture to convey
Speaker 1: comic relief or express emotions unquote, although I would say
Speaker 1: in the case of this discussion, as there are obviously
Speaker 1: non white people in corporate marketing, although Aszaria pointed out,
Speaker 1: this itself is still a very white dominated space. That
Speaker 1: digital blackface has been used as a way for companies
Speaker 1: to seem as if they're a part of the mainstream
Speaker 1: Internet culture that, like so many creative worlds, has been
Speaker 1: innovated by black artists and creators before having that work
Speaker 1: co op did by white people, or just capitalism in general.
Speaker 1: Jen Alpha is the first generation to truly have no
Speaker 1: memory of what it's like to build a sense of
Speaker 1: self free from the Internet, and it remains to be
Speaker 1: seen what that's going to mean down the line. Because
Speaker 1: I don't mean to fear monger, I genuinely don't know.
Speaker 1: These will be my kids, my nieces, my nephews. And
Speaker 1: the only thing I think you can do that's more
Speaker 1: unproductive and self sabotaging than assume your children's generation is
Speaker 1: going to ruin the world is that your children's generation
Speaker 1: is solely responsible for saving the world. It does freak
Speaker 1: me out that kids are more vulnerable than ever to
Speaker 1: this kind of advertising, and it's a relief when that
Speaker 1: advertising is for something as innocuous as learning a second language.
Speaker 1: But in the big picture, it's hard to say. I
Speaker 1: have plenty of young parents in my family and friend
Speaker 1: groups who are trying to shield their kids from pernicious marketing.
Speaker 1: But let's be honest, we're not going to be any
Speaker 1: more successful than our parents were. Think of virtually every
Speaker 1: social media manager you've heard from in this series. Serenity
Speaker 1: Disco found themselves on live journaling sites before becoming the
Speaker 1: Denny's tumbler. Amy Brown was Amy from MySpace before becoming
Speaker 1: the Wendy's Twitter. Nathan Alibach was an anti capitalist musician
Speaker 1: before translating that ethos to the stake of Twitter. Zaria
Speaker 1: Parvez was the kid that was scolded out of taking
Speaker 1: down a Catholic school in the third grade before becoming
Speaker 1: the horny due Lingo bird. As long as there are
Speaker 1: creative kids, they're going to get around what their parents
Speaker 1: don't want them to access. And all of these social
Speaker 1: media managers and writers are talented, funny, creative people who
Speaker 1: have had to make a living. I think a little
Speaker 1: bit too easy to criticize this class of writer before
Speaker 1: considering how lucky or more often financially privileged. You need
Speaker 1: to be just to be able to write without worrying
Speaker 1: where your next rent check is coming from, your healthcare,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be. Most of us are serving a machine,
Speaker 1: and to be able to extract yourself from that is
Speaker 1: a tremendous privilege. But that also doesn't mean that it's
Speaker 1: the only way to make ends meet. And I feel,
Speaker 1: to some extent like I'm blowing hot air here. I
Speaker 1: probably am because I'm broadcasting this on iHeartRadio. And while
Speaker 1: I've been really lucky to have basically full creative control
Speaker 1: of my work here, it's because it's monetized to serve
Speaker 1: something larger than myself. So I'm certainly not above this,
Speaker 1: and any criticism of this environment is a criticism of
Speaker 1: myself too. The only conclusion I can ever come to
Speaker 1: is that what would resolve this kind of creativity having
Speaker 1: to be used to sell something is a public reinvestment
Speaker 1: into arts and affirming it as something that's important, which
Speaker 1: under the current American administration. Best of luck, but we
Speaker 1: should keep talking about it. This weirdly tapers into what
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about next week, and so
Speaker 1: with a little luck and a little bit of revolutionary
Speaker 1: action Sentient two Horny Brands. Your sixteenth Minute ends Now.
Speaker 1: Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and
Speaker 1: iHeart Radios. It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamielrossis.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 1: Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
Speaker 1: from Brant Crater and Pet. Shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson,
Speaker 1: my cats fleeing Casper and my pet rock Bird will
Speaker 1: outlive us all. Bye.