Eric Siu breaks down Duolingo's viral tweet staging the mascot's death, which hit 69 million views and pulled in retweets from Netflix and Halo. The post referenced Dua Lipa and ended with a call-to-action: do a Duolingo lesson instead of sending flowers.
So Duolingo posted a tweet saying their mascot died and it got 69 million views on the statement. It mentioned Dua Lipa at the end because they sound similar and get a Dua Lipa quote tweet. So I think that celebrity, I guess, saw it and it looked very similar. So they like retweeted it and the big brands like Netflix and Halo quote tweeted it. Search interest hit all-time highs. So I think they did a form of hijacking a brand and then they actually liked the creativity around it. And then the post tweet, it said, in lieu of flowers, please do a Duolingo lesson. They eliminated the mascot and they still got a lot of impressions for it.
