I’m going on tour! I swore I’d never do a multi-city run again, but emo + work + basketball opportunities all popped up in quick succession. I’ve got Boston to see The Receiving End Of Sirens reunite (one of my all-timers), straight to Vegas for Adobe Summit, then off to LA for a secret basketball thing, (which may or may not be related to my last secret basketball thing).

If you’re around the towns, give me a shout! Love a coffee chat. Hell, maybe we get a bunch of us together? Shoot me an email here.

—Jack Appleby

Youuu should start writing about your career on LinkedIn. It honestly changed my life.

You’ve probably noticed that everyoneee is writing on LinkedIn these days. You really should get in on it—it’s one of the easiest ways to stand out in this industry right now. My last 3 full-time jobs all came in my DMs from people who read my content!

But I know writing can be a bit scary, so I built a $5/month tool for ya that gives you daily writing prompts + a community of others learning to share their thinking online!

Welcome to Break An Egg 🐣. For just $5/month, you’ll get:

• 30 LinkedIn prompts designed to mine your experience for content

• New ways to highlight your career milestones & accomplishments

• A community of 1000+ other BAEs who help each other!

You can sign up right here. Cheaper than a latte. I’m keeping it at this $5/month mark for Future Social readers, so hope to see ya there!

What Duolingo’s Death says about social

Well, this may genuinely be the most viral social media campaign of all-time.

Duolingo killed off their beloved Owl mascot on February 11, sharing the news via a death announcement. For two straight weeks, all of Duolingo’s content paid tribute to the untimely passing, including footage framing a Cyber Truck, blaming users for not keeping their streaks alive, and even other mascots carrying an open casket. To say the very least, they committed to the bit, all the way to the reveal that Duo faked his death (because, as he says, “legends never die”)

Anddd the engagement numbers are astounding.

• 2.1 million likes + 623,000 shares on the Instagram death announcement

• 185 million combined views across their last 14 TikToks

• 63.5 million views on a single TikTok

• 240 million views on just their own tweets

• Tweets from Dua Lipa + The World Health Organization (?!)

It’s not crazy to think Duolingo earned over a billion organic views from this campaign once we weigh in earned media + press coverage. These are stats us marketers only dream of, and usually need millions of paid support to hit.

Now before you go capsize Captain Crunch or extreminate Mickey Mouse, let’s talk about what we can learn from Duo’s death march, what’s repeatable, and how to take these learnings to our brands.

The simplest takeaway: your brand needs a face

You’ve probably heard “people like people, not brands,” which is sorta a problem, because we work for brands. So, brands have tried all sorts of things to get more people-y:

• John Deere hired a Chief TikTok Officer to make content + be their face

• Tony The Tiger streamed on Twitch as a VTuber

• Superside put employees front and center on TikTok

With an overwhelming % of social media shifting towards short-form vertical videos on recommendation-based algorithmic feeds, it’s becoming more and more noticeable when social does not have an actual person in the content. It’s just pretty damn hard to build audience if you’re not giving them someone to connect with.

But characters need developed personality.

Stoytelling this, storytelling that—it’s everyone’s favorite buzzword for modern social media campaigns, though candidly… I never really see much great storytelling from brands.

But Duolingo built a character. They turned a 2D mascot into a living, breathing being with personality, history, and relationships (long-time love interested Dua Lipa tweeted her condolences). We know Duo’s interests (they’re a big Swiftie). The owl even has a Fandom page with some of its history. It’s not crazy to think that Duo could star in a TV show or movie—Duolingo On Ice was just an April Fool’s marketing stunt, but plenty of fans said they’d happily watch triple axels from the owl. Netflix even pumped out a short video of Duo dying on Squid Games. It’s practically a cinematic universe at this point.

Millennial marketers might remember when Mr. Peanut died. It took a literal Super Bowl spot to make people care about that monocled nut dying. We didn’t have any relationship with the character, so our only reaction was “oh wow, a brand killed a famous mascot,” which just isn’t enough. Planter’s even tried some organic social around it, but they hadn’t developed a community to support the nut hunt.

Meanwhile, Duo died through organic social posts, to a legion of followers who legitimately cared. That’s because of years of relationship and character building!

So no, you can’t just drop a mascot and think you’re good. You gotta actually give them the limelight consistently, and make sure they’re lovable.

I said personality—not just being unhinged!

When I hear young marketers say they wanna be like Duolingo, they usually quote the chaotic nature of the account. To me, the insanity is just one of many personalities they could’ve used (and don’t get me wrong, it’s worked tremendously well for them!), but the genius was always creating the mascot itself, then applying any consistent personality to it.

Just take a look at the 12 Brand Archetypes wheel! There are SO MANY OPTIONS for ya here.

Pick the one that’s most true to your brand, then apply it to a real social media spokesperson, be it a hired Chief TikTok Officer, your mascot brought to life, or even your Community Manager.

If you wanna learn more about brand voice exercises, I built a free workshop with my pal at SEMRush a month or two ago (was a paid partnership, but I’m proud of that work, so here’s some extra free promo).

But yeah, you just need SOME personality to win here!

Also, can we draw the line at suicide jokes?

It wouldn’t be Duolingo if they didn’t go at least one step too far. Maybe their willingness to cross lines is why they’re so viral all the time. But personally, I just don’t need brands making suicide jokes in their content.

Again, I wanna clearly state that I think Duolingo crushed it with this campaign. Their fans clearly loved it, the world clearly loved it, and they should definitely win awards for this one. But one of their videos used the “I try not to kill myself” TikTok sound. Which, hey, it’s a popular TikTok sound. But boy, it just feels like normalizing suicide as a way to express dramatics isn’t something we should see from brands, regardless of what culture’s doing.

But it’s time to put a face to the name

I genuinely think it’s gonna be harder and harder to succeed in organic social if you don’t have someone or some creature for your audience to connect with. Consider putting a face with the brand name.

Follow my Instagram for more marketing content!

Gonna be dropping a whole lot more marketing content through video this year, so shoot me a follow there, we’ll talk shop!