The Death and Resurrection of the Green Owl: Duolingo's Controversial Marketing Decision

One of the most well-known online personalities, the Duolingo owl (Duo), was shockingly "killed off" on Feb. 11, 2025, after an advertisement showed that the owl was hit by a Cybertruck. The initial reasoning behind this sudden marketing choice was confusing to app users, and the company even kept the reason for death a secret, in order to create more engagement with the app. 

Regular users of Duolingo were still shocked about their app's mascot being randomly announced as dead, but there had been past messages in the app that had hinted to this eventual end. Duolingo was known for constantly threatening the death of Duo if the users did not finish their language lessons. It seemed like a very unrealistic threat at first, but led to the company actually going through with it. 

The message posted to Duolingo's Instagram page as the death announcement stated, "It is with heavy hearts that we inform you that Duo, formally known as The Duolingo Owl, is dead." They then doubled down on their typical dark humor for a more impactful caption, saying, "Authorities are currently investigating his cause of death and we are cooperating fully. Tbh, he probably died waiting for you to do your lesson, but what do we know." 

Many users of the app found these threatening messages entertaining and on brand with the dark humor of the company, while others were not so thrilled to find such harsh words and content within a notification of a language-learning app. The killing off of Duo led to this latter audience being very unhappy with the brand and their marketing strategy being deemed "unnecessary" and "extreme."

After all of the chaos of announcing the death of their mascot, there was another post two weeks later that announced the sudden resurrection of the owl. On Feb. 24, Duolingo took to their social media to declare that Duo was indeed alive, with the caption, "Ya'll really think I'd let a Cybertruck take me out? #duolingohasrisen."

The brand definitely gained some traction with its choices of these sudden announcements, with celebrities even commenting on the death of the owl. Their social media became more prominent and their two-week-long "mourning period" of Duo led to people remaining intrigued and wanting to know what the reasoning behind the owl's death was. Even though they ended up choosing to bring the owl back to life, that was still a choice that brought a lot of added recognition to the brand, and overall gave them more engagement on their online platforms. 

By announcing both the death and resurrection of Duo on Instagram, this was a marketing choice that was catered to the correct audience. The main demographic of users who enjoy the social media content put out by the brand are the younger generations, and Instagram is where the majority of them are reached. Most of the people who interacted with the brand both before and after the announcements were in that age range, and even though some people did not appreciate the company's choice to kill of their mascot as a marketing tactic, it definitely still had a lasting impact on the brand's relevance on social media as a whole.