Duo's Demise: Duolingo's Viral Rebranding Stunt

Well, it's, it's kind of interesting to me because, because he's been around for quite a bit and has had a giant personality and you know, like I said, they change the, the app screen based on kind of where you're at, which is kind of where you are in your journey and when he's doing different things and stuff like that. And I thought it was interesting that they did it with a Tesla cybertruck because I thought that was clearly trying to engage Elon Musk. Hey everybody.

Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch.

With your hosts, Ryan Deiss and me, Roland Frazier. Ryan, how you doing today, dude?

I'm really, really good because next week I'm headed down to Mexico. One of our favorite places, Punta Mita. You're not gonna be there, sadly, but hanging out with our founders board Mastermind members. So excited to be that. But right now I'm in that kind of do two weeks worth of work in one week so that you can actually enjoy your vacation. So I'm excited. But I'm, I'm also like incredibly stressed out by the volume of work and what the mode that I'm in right now is. I'm in the. I don't want to do any of this. So I'm procrastinating.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

So you have all that but you're getting nothing done.

And it's terrible because I'm self aware, you know, Like, I know that what I'm doing is terrible. Um, like I had a friend this morning, like, hey, can we get, can we get together? I'd love to. I was like, yeah, absolutely. I got nothing to do. That's not true. I got tons to do, Gobs. I just don't want to do it. So I'm in the right now. I'm in the procrastination phase that's going to give way to the. Oh my God, I'm totally screwed. And I have to, you know, get all this done. And that's when I'm at like peak productivity. Superhuman level productivity.

But you will, you will get it done.

I know you have always has a wing in you. What about you? What you up to?

I am having. Having fun. Our producer, my son Ryan and I have been playing with one of our friends around with the idea of starting a music channel. And so we're playing with that as I'm coming to the end of a little bit over a year long redo of my music studio at the house and everything. So that's kind of fun. I've Been.

Can you reveal yet the. The channel name or anything?

Synth Cave. I think it's the Synth Cave but I can't ever find it on YouTube. Ryan has my son's name. Ryan has got it but it doesn't show up on my account.

It's a good sign.

It's so. It's really hard to get too. So it's not getting that it would get otherwise. Yeah, but yeah, that's cool. And recovering from a pickleball injury, which is annoying. I don't like. I don't like sports injury type things. That's not fun. And I thought the whole point of.

Pickleball is you're not like allowed to get injured. Like that's why like old people play it and stuff.

Yeah, but you're. I mean it, it can be like watch the tournaments. It. It can be as athletic as you want it to be. So it's, it's definitely. If you're playing at a higher level, it definitely gets injurable.

So what did you injure?

I pulled a calf muscle going, you know, going for a ball that was low. That was. That came down in the opposite direction that I thought it was going to come. So I had to make a quick change and so anyway, enough of. Enough of that stuff.

The other day I sneezed really hard and pulled my back. So.

You did what?

The other day I sneezed really hard and. And pulled a muscle on my back. So that's. That's how old I am. That's on that age now.

That's great. I like it. So we had a couple things that we talked about talking about today. One of the ones that is fairly timely is that the very, very big personality green owl named Duo, that is the mascot of Duolingo has sadly been killed off by Duolingo. Apparently the story is that Duo, which is his name, was fatally struck by a Tesla cybertruck. And it's kind of interesting because he, he had like the, the picture of him on Duolingo. If any of you guys have the app changes. Like if you don't. Right now he's got X's in his eyes. Like, you know, like he's, he's. And like a tongue that's like, like he's been.

Ryan, do we have a picture of dead Duo? Can we pull that up on the screen while, while you're describing it? Roland, keep going.

Yeah. And he's. He's on my app. I don't know if you can see this is gonna focus. Yeah. See the X's in the. Oh, yeah, yeah.

He doesn't look so good. Yeah.

Interestingly enough, just a few days ago he was, he was mad at me because I hadn't, I hadn't continued my streak. And so it was like a broken glass, like shattered glass all over him and a fade. It's like very, very funny.

Wait, so can dead, can dead Duo be mad at you?

No, I said a few days ago, when he was alive, he was just killed, I think maybe even this morning or yesterday.

Yeah, well, I heard he was killed. My youngest son, Timmy, he did Duolingo. I think he had like a streak, a 500 day streak, which for like 1112 year old was pretty solid in German. And, and he came and told me, he's like, they killed Duo. I was like, I'm so sorry, I don't know who we're talking about right now. I was happy to hear that it was an animated, you know, foreign language learning logo app. So anyway, so yeah, so what's the plan here? They're just killing off.

Well, it's, it's kind of interesting to me because, because he's been around for quite a bit and has had a giant personality and you know, like I said, they changed the app screen based on kind of where you're at, which is kind of where you are in your journey and when he's doing different things and stuff like that. And I thought it was interesting that they did it with a Tesla cybertruck because I thought that was clearly trying to engage Elon Musk and, and Tesla, which is very smart. They had already kind of reeled in because he talks about Dua Lipa being his counterpart. And so Dua Lipa posted an Instagram post about his demise and several.

Surely that was a paid promotion, right?

Who knows?

But surely she's in on it. Who knows?

And several other brands also have done the same thing. So I think they're smart because they're engaging with somebody with a, you know, a brand that has a giant following and is amazing at marketing and vice versa. And so I just thought it was pretty cool. And so I thought it'd be interesting to talk about it because the whole idea of a brand change is something that people think about from time to time. And we have certainly. I know we had a mastermind called War Room that we talked about. Well, that's kind of masculine and it's like talks about fighting and when we would get people to do logos for it. I remember one of the animated logos was people with pitchforks and like knives. And skies and, like, fight fire in the background. And we're like, no, this is not like Apocalypse Mastermind.

This is, you know, it's like a strategy room.

Like, you know, Churchill back in World War II. And they're like, well, we weren't alive then. We don't even have any idea what that was. So. So we had talked then about rebranding it, and it's a big decision because you have brand recognition and everything. And I don't think they're going to change the name of the company. But a mascot that's been around for a long time is, you know, kind of interesting. And so they've got a mixed bag of responses to it. The thing is, is that they could.

Bring him back, but that would cost.

Them some credibility if they ever tried to do it again. And I think some. Some loss of trust. But also, there are people that are like, you know, you can't kill Duo. He's our guy. Right? So. So it's kind of interesting. And so the things that I thought.

Was, it is a story also.

So rather than just announce, we're, you know, we're not classic Coke anymore, we're New Coke, you know, we're the 12 iterations of Pepsi Logo or whatever, you know, here's our new logo, here's our new brand, they told a story. They said, you know, yeah, Duo was out, you know, and his cruised around, got hit by a cybertruck, you know, know, and fatally, fatally hit by a cyber truck.

And that creates an actual story.

And so I thought that they've done such a good job of telling stories with this mascot for all this time, that it was kind of cool and appropriate that they would tell a story here. And they've done a great job of, like, really, really creating a dialogue around it so that it's. It's. It's. It's not just something that. That they announce. It's actually telling a story. And the announcement comes as a byproduct of the story as opposed to just being a boring announcement. And they talk about funny. You know, it's like they bring in storytelling, humor. They are responding by not committing specifically to what's going to happen in the future. And they are asking their audience to suggest what they think happened or what they think is going to happen. And then they're using that to measure popularity of different potential concepts, crowdsource ideas as to how they're going to redirect the narrative going forward. And. And then they'll pick the one probably that resonates with the most people that they want it to resonate with, which I think is brilliant. And. And then they are also doing this, like, they want people that like Tesla and cybertrucks and things like that. So, like, they're telling a story to people who aspire to the things that are in the story.

So that the nice thing about that is it works both for people who like Tesla and cybertrucks and. And people who don't. Because if you like Tesla and cybertrucks, you're like, ha. Yeah, like, I love that. And if you hate them, you're like, just like those bastard cybertruck owners. They're running over like, sweet, adorable things. So, yeah, it's kind of. You win either way. You either love it or you hate it. Yeah.

So I just thought it'd be kind of cool to. To. To say, like, lots of good lessons, I think, from that, you know, in. In the things that I mentioned and probably some more that you got. And then, you know. So let's talk about if you are thinking about doing a brand change, is it like, does it have to be that you're changing the name of the company? Or can it just be that you're changing a spokesperson? Because this is effectively a spokesperson or a mascot. Does it make sense to have a mascot? Are there benefits to having an animated cartoon mascot? Because you can have, you know, it's basically never going to ask for a raise because it basically doesn't have any ability to do that, at least not yet. Until I. Exceeds our intelligence, I suppose. But I just. A lot of interesting things here to think about, right? That the split of, like, having a person who's representing your brand who might go out and get into trouble or do something like Jared, I think it was for Subway.

Right?

Yeah. Like all of your marketing and everything that you've built and put millions or hundreds of millions of dollars into a brand can go away in the blink of an eye. If somebody does something stupid or gets canceled or does something illegal. And also, you're building brand equity in another person even though they're speaking to your brand, if you're elevating them and pouring exposure dollars into getting them well known, it's very likely that at some point with a successful campaign, they're going to come back and say, hey, you need to give me more money. So that's. That's the. Having a person that's a spokesperson, having a creature that's fictitious that's drawn as a spokesperson, like the Aflac duck, or, you know, or duo or the Chihuahua in Taco Bell ads for several years. Right. Those, those all really give you much more flexibility and the downside and help you reduce the downside of bad things happening. So I'd love to talk about, should we think about having a spokesperson? Should we think about having an animated or fictitious creature kind of thing? What are the goods and bads? And if we're going to make a brand change, should we lean all the way in and say we're not, you know, we're no longer Virgin Airlines, we are part of Alaska because we got bought. Or you know, like it's just, to me it seems like there's a lot of interesting things. So that's my not completely well thought out explosion of thought.

Yeah, let's, I mean, I think it's worth taking kind of one at a time. So the, the, the idea of specifically this campaign, like the duo is dead campaign, if it is indeed an actual rebrand, I think it's pretty brilliant because I think most rebrands are astoundingly stupid. They're self congratulatory. It's the, the, the business talking about all these reasons, like self aggrandized reasons, pulling a muscle to pat themselves on a back reasons for why they're changing their logo and. Exactly. Nobody fricking cares, okay? Nobody cares. Clearly some creative agency sold some CMO who sold some CEO on their own freaking ego for a whole lot of money. Okay? That is what the vast majority of rebrands are. I mean, I cannot remember the whole time you were talking about this. I've been trying to think of a single company rebrand that as a direct result of that rebrand, the logo change or even a name change, people all of a sudden were like, oh heck yeah, I'm all in on that one now. Like, I think it far more likely everybody's like, well that's stupid that why do they spend all that money? Like, I mean you talk about the Pepsi, like seriously, everybody should go and Google Pepsi logo and its changes over the years. I mean it's like the most ridiculous, absurd little changes. I think Walmart just updated its logo and if you squint even a little bit, it looks exactly the same, right?

And so you get brands that have. And it might be because like nobody generally likes change. And so when you see a brand change, I'll look at a fashion brand. So Yves Saint Laurent is a relatively big fashion brand and they were YSL for years. They went from Yves St. Laurent to YSL and then they just changed to St. Laurent. And we were all kind of like, why? Why?

Everybody had decided you. And so that's. I think that's. So going back to that, I think that's such a great point. So I think in general, it is a foolish, foolish, foolish move to invest money in updating your brand. And we've done this like a digital marketer, I think, two or three times. It's like, I got sick of, like, the gears, and I'm like, they're basically Christmas colors. This is stupid. We should go and update it. And invariably, we never came up with anything better. I'm like, nobody cares. This is not going to make us any new money. Let's leave it the same. Like, why are we messing with this? It just doesn't matter. So if, however you make the decision that you're going to do it, I guess at least have some. Some fun with it, with what they're doing, gather some additional attention around it, make it at least somewhat timely, relevant and entertaining to what people are talking about. So I'll give them that. If it's a brand change, I think there's a pretty good chance that this is all just kind of a PR stunt. There are no real changes happening whatsoever. And Duo is going to be back. I mean, this is like when soap operas would kill off the main character and it turns out it was just a dream.

Right.

I mean, this has the, the makings of that to me. And maybe I'm wrong.

It was interesting.

If they're doing it as an aspect of a brand change, I still think brand changes are largely stupid, largely a waste of money, largely a waste of marketing space. But if you're going to do it, at least this seems like one of the most inventive and creative ways that I've seen, so I'll buy that. But what you said about Yves Saint Laurent, I think is so important when it, when a. When a brand change does make sense is when your customers are pulling you in that direction. So I'll give an example of what I said before. I couldn't come up with an example for. So I said before, I can't come up with an example of a brand change that actually made sense. Well, here's one that I just thought of. Kfc.

Yeah.

So growing up, it was Kentucky Fried Chicken, right? Right. And you had Colonel Sanders on a box of chicken. It was very kind of old school looking. What did all the customers call it, though? Yeah, we all called it kfc. Right. And so they rebranded to lean into what their customers were calling Them.

Yeah, the market.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, you're calling us this same. Going back to our event traffic and conversion summit, everybody was calling it tnc so we changed the logo to T ampersand C. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it was a lot shorter, more, more iconic, more brandable, but it also was what people were calling it. Now as soon as we sold that brand, as soon as we sold that company, what's the first thing that the new owners do? They change the logo to something that they felt would be more fancy and new that nobody freaking recognized.

They changed it to T dot C.

As I recall, it was TNC with a dot over it and spent tens of thousands of dollars to get it done. I think brand changes, if they align with where you're, with where the market is headed and what people are calling you, that I'll buy, I'll buy that. If you're not being pulled in that direction though, this is just marketing masturbation.

Yeah. Well now here in their case I'm wondering because they, they basically are engaging everybody on social media like it's kind of a free earned media extravaganza. Right. So, so for them like the other, the other side of it. So I like the, the audience pulls you there I think is a great. And KFC is a fantastic example as, as honestly as TNC and I think that the YSL and there's probably 10 more like that. That's a counter commented. That's like why, you know, but, and, and they'll do stupid things. Huh?

We just hate money and yeah, yeah.

It'S just, it's just crazy. But, but, but I, but the other reason would be to create controversy. Like if you've got people that love this, this owl and you've got people that hate it because a lot of people hate it because he's also quite manipulative then like it's, it's a good lean to get a big boost in, in just earned media presence out there or share. Is it share a voice because, because it's going to, everybody's going to talk about it. Right? So, so like I think they get way more mileage out of this than spending $50 million on a marketing campaign or whatever. Is it 11 million a minute now on a Super bowl ad? This is just like, you know, catches like wildfire. Right. So, so if you're trying to do that creating a huge controversy could be cool and maybe they're going to come out and say, you know, like you said like a soap opera thing, it's like. No, actually, it turns out it was Duo's twin or Duo is concerned about people. You know, he. We knew that he had something out for him, so we had doppel duo. Doppel duos that were, you know, his doppelganger that did it. You know, it's like.

It turns out he's been flat all along because he's an app, you know. Do you know Mr. Peanut?

Mr. Peanut. They killed Planners. Killed Mr. Peanut. But then, like, they killed Mr. Peanut, then had the tears of the Kool Aid character cry. A rebirth of baby Peanut. And that's going to grow, I guess, into the new Mr. Peanut, maybe with a more modern feel instead of the spectacle and the top hat and the. Whatever you call those things that Spats. He's going to, you know, he's going to be like, cool, hip.

That's like the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. Mr. Peanut needs the freaking spectacles in the top hat or he's not Mr. Peanut. So the tears of Kool Aid. Yeah, I'll buy you that.

That.

That's kind of clever. But he should be reborn into exactly what he was before Jack in the Box did this. They literally blew up, you know, Jack and then revived him like a decade or so later. Right. And now Jack is the. Is that thing. So, look, you know, I think. I think probably pivoting to talking about spokespeople when it. And. And fictitious spokespeople is a. You know, now's a good time to do that, but just kind of to.

To summarize what we said. So kind of. And you can say agree or disagree, but I think two reasons. One, the market has pulled you there anyway, so lean into the new and it makes you modern and it makes sense. Two, if you want to create a giant amount of earned media and you've got the audience to do that, or particularly if you have a polarized audience of liking and not liking, then it can be good to do it, even if you do let them go at that point. And just like, who's. Who's the successor? Because, I mean, at some point, it's been too long, right? Yeah.

If you're gonna make a change anyway. And sometimes it is appropriate to make a change for a mascot or a spokesperson. Right. That we're not talking about name and necessarily logo at this point. So if you decide that it is time to make a change, and this is very appropriate when you're talking about actual human spokespeople, because they do have a quite Literal life cycle. And so, yeah, there are times when it makes sense to exit them. And so I think coming up with a story and a narrative around why it's happening. Agree. Makes all the sense in the world if you have to make a change. You know, I think it was Lee Iacocus said, never let a good crisis go to waste. Never let a good change that you have to make anyway go to waste. So to the extent that they feel like they needed to make a change, I know there are lots of people who hate that stupid owl. And so maybe their, their research had told them that, like, look, we've hit a ceiling and until we get rid of this freaking owl, we're not going to go any further. So we got to kill the owl. Maybe somebody was like, let's kill the owl.

And either way, do it with the story. Create a story. Yep, yep. And particularly their story, the way they did it, talking about things that their target audience, their ideal target audience would, Would be into and building the story around those things. Just. Just smart. Okay, so let's.

Having him get hit by a cybertruck was, I mean, obvious in retrospect, and that's why it's brilliant. Yeah, that was really, really smart.

It's brilliant.

So smart.

All right, so let's talk about then, spokespeople, what are your thoughts? I'm going to start by just saying generally the idea of a spokesperson is that you're tagging on to their credibility. And we even referred to it in the industry sometimes as a trust agent, that it's somebody that other people already trust that you then put talking about your product. And if they're not an obvious shill, you know, then it could actually be a good thing.

Yeah, I think the obvious spokesperson for any brand in the beginning and likely the most effective. And this is whether you're B2. B2C is going to be the founder. Yeah, that is just. We've just seen it time and time and time again.

You got Sarah Blakely at Spanx and Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway and Branson at Virgin, et cetera, et cetera.

Yep. Time. I mean, even, you know, Steve Jobs at Apple, I mean, we just see it time and time and time again. The founder is typically going to be the most effective key person of influence, trust agent to get that brand going, no matter the industry that you are in now. And very often they're free because they're already there, you're already paying them.

And so I even like the acquirer. Like, I forget if it was Schick or Gillette. But the guy that bought the company said basically the ads back in the. Maybe it was the 70s were I liked it so much I bought the company and it really got traction. Right. And then it was like, I don't know who this guy is, but apparently he's some guy that's rich enough to be able to buy a company. And he liked his Dag on razors so much that he's like, I'm going to be sure these don't go away. I bought the company. Or Warren Buffett, who's like, I'm investing heavily in Coke because I like cherry coke and I want him to keep making cherry Coke. Right.

Buddy of mine, Ken Goodrich, who he acquired an H Vac company that was kind of circling the drain out in Phoenix and called Gettle. And his whole thing is, I bought this company because when I was a kid, my dad worked for Gettle and he said that Gettle was the best, you know, and I was successful in life and I. And, you know, Gettle wasn't doing well. And so I wanted to revive this company, you know, because my dad's memory right around that. Oh, God. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, literally, he told. He told the story of. I mean, the story was when he was a kid, his dad would have him come out on jobs and hold the flashlight while he was working on these units at night. And he was dispensing wisdom to his kid. And what he didn't realize because his dad didn't tell him is that his dad was sick, his dad had cancer. His dad knew he didn't have long to live.

Yeah.

And so the. All of the memories around, like, being with his dad working on Gettle machines is a big part of his kind of story and why he wanted to revive the brand as a part of his. And so, like, if you go and you Google Gettle, which is spelled G O E T, T L, it's hard to spell, but it's sounds like it sounds. Keep it cold. But yeah, but if you go and look at it still, the logo, the character is a little boy holding a flashlight. And that's like, you know, I gotta credit my friend and mentor, Roy Williams, came up with that whole campaign and everything around that. But it's because he asked the origin story. So very often, if you have an origin story, like you said, it doesn't have to be the founder, it could very well be the acquirer. I think it's such a good point.

But the cool thing there is founder let's call it owner, Founder. Owner. Is that. Now, unless you get yourself into trouble, which we have seen several founders that went through that, whether it's. I think it was just a board fight, the guy that had Men's Wearhouse, or the. Who was it? The. What was the fashion brand that the guy called people fat and said, our stuff isn't for fat.

Lululemon. Yeah, yeah, Lululemon. It was.

That wasn't Chip Wilson.

Yeah, Chip Wilson.

He said. He said we don't. I think he said we don't make clothes. But there was another guy that was American. I thought it was the company that Ryan worked for.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dang. Yeah. I can't remember the name of it. Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, I know. I know exactly what you're talking about.

So you can get yourself into trouble, but at least you're answering to yourself. You're not like, you know, it's up to you, not up to somebody else that does something terrible. And you could pay yourself more, but that's kind of like you're paying yourself more, so that's fine, too. So it avoids a lot of things, and I think it's kind of authentic. So it's nice because it's not, you know, paid shill. It's actual real, live. I'm here. This is my company. This is my backstory. I think that's. That's a great way to go. If you're not doing that, it's something to consider leaning into. Right, yeah.

Sorry, Ryan, what was that. What was that company name again? No, Abercrombie. Now, I wouldn't have. I mean, Abercrombie did.

It was American brands.

Different. American Apparel, I think.

American Apparel. That's it. Yeah.

American Apparel. There we go. All right, Find. Find your male fashion brand that didn't have a CEO that went off or find your fashion brand didn't have a CEO that went off the deep end and basically hurled racial and, you know, masculine slurs at everybody. They're their legion, apparently.

They are. But so anyway, that's like. That's a thing for you guys to think about out in the audience is we are spokespeople for our brands. Ryan is. I am. And we find that to be great because, you know, we live the brand. We birth the brand. We are the brand. There is no doubt in, I think, the authenticity of who we are there. And we don't risk getting into trouble unless we decide to get in trouble. And we don't have to take. We don't get hit with surprise. You've, you know, the company's invested a ton of money in building you and now you want more money or you're going to go to a competitor potentially, which the guy. Do you remember the guy from Verizon that was walking around saying, can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? And then he went to T Mobile and Verizon had put all that money. You know, it's like, oh, that was, you know, smart. I think of him a little dirty, but smart. And you know that. So none of that is a risk. So that's something for you guys to think about. Now. What about having a. Not you, you, you hate the spotlight and you're not willing to go into it. What do you do?

I think closely, I think closely related to that is bringing on a celebrity or just a key person of influence as, as a co investor. I mean, so you've seen like Ryan Reynolds do this with Mint Mobile and with a number of other things, you know, you've, you've seen the rock, you know, do this. So there's, there's a lot of notable examples of celebrities that have done this and align themselves with, with brands and it's been effective. You know, I don't know who the actual operating partners were in that business, but you know, the celebrity. Shaquille o' Neal similarly does a lot of endorsements with Papa John's and people know that he's one of the largest franchisees for Papa John's. Just about every single endorsement deal he has, he's got some type of equity stake in the company. And so he's more than just kind of a passive paid shill talking head. Obviously I was paid to be here and then I'm going to leave type person, there's clearly more behind it. And so I think that that would be kind of the next thing. So if you don't want to have anything to do with it, just that's really expensive. You know, you're giving somebody equity and the risk is like you said, they go all Jared on you and next thing you know, you can't. Now you've got somebody with equity and you could put all the morality clauses and things like that, it still is hard to get that equity back and they can still bring your brand down.

Yeah.

So I do think that I like the goal to me to get to the place. I think this is the hardest to get to. But if you can get to the place where jumping all the way to like the end game where Geico is where you have not one, not two. They got like three different fictional endorsers. You got, I mean they've got.

And you got the caveman, they've got the gecko.

They had the caveman. The duck is aflac. Sorry, okay. You got the gecko. Yeah, yeah, the duck is aflac.

I remember the duck. I mean the. Yeah, I remember the caveman and the gecko was there. Are they the ones that have the lady that's at the store?

Flo is progressive, but if you notice they're now bringing in another person that's kind of Flo's buddy, you know, so there's a guy there that's kind of like guy flow. And so progressive is doing the same thing of like, hey, let's bring, you know, more, more actors in. I forget the one that. And this is the problem with a lot of these insurance companies is they're a commodity.

Yeah.

But there's.

As evidenced by our conversation just now. Yeah.

Jake from State Farm. Right. You got Jake from State Farm who's, you know, who, who's out there who. Originally Jake from State Farm was a white guy and now Jake from State Farm is, is a black actor. Right. I mean, so it, it didn't matter in that case because again, these were fictional characters. So they could even swap out the actors with like two completely different looking people and, and nobody cared because it was, you know, they're still interesting characters.

Yeah.

So that I think if you can get to the point where you have fictional characters that are played in some cases by totally. I mean the, the, the Geico Gecko is unlikely to get like addicted to meth and go like rob a bank. Right, right. Like, I'm not saying the actor that.

Voices that gecko may very well, but you can probably find somebody else that can do the price.

Find somebody else with a clever British accent. If not, I bet they get AI that freak nasty. So you know, even in the case where you've got somebody like, like a flow, like a fictional, like a real person playing a fictional person, these, these then become far more interchangeable because you're not leveraging the, the credibility of the actual person. What you're leveraging is the story and the brand that's built around them. And so I think if you can get there now, that's hard and that takes a really long time. Like a really, really long time. One of the mistakes I think that going, going back to where we came, that Duolingo is going to make is they had built that like they have that with Duo. So if they truly kill this off, I would be concerned. So if I'm them, I would sooner introduce another one.

Yeah.

That the other one comes into play. Duo. And maybe this one kind of beat up Duo. Or maybe we find that like the person driving the cybertruck was the new one. Duo's not dead. You know, he's off like so. And they can kind of come back in. Before you kill something off. Introduce another one.

Yeah.

Before you even. And this goes back to you as a personal brand, before you as a founder brand, completely step away. Are there some other people on your team who you can maybe start to elevate just a little bit? Not just one, because we don't want to create a, you know, another guru. But are there a couple of them?

Yeah.

Who we can start to, you know, begin to elevate that I think is, is how we can create the spokespeople can create some brand redundancy without creating so much brand dependency on a singular individual.

I love that. So we talked about some takeaways across the board here, but basically avoid the rebrand unless it's one of the two situations we talked about. The market's leading you there or you've decided that it's time and there's a reason for that. Maybe you've hit a wall in growth or earned media or it just feels burnout or your demographic has changed and you're trying to speak to them better. But not. You got to be careful, not in a patronizing way.

It should be the last remaining resort if that's what you're doing.

Prefer founder led campaigns and lean into the storytelling no matter what on any of those, both on the transition and on the new brand.

Right.

Because there, there wasn't like, I'll go with YSL and I wish I could think of some of the others because I, I know that, I know that you and I and my wife and I have talked about this with maybe 10 brands in the last couple of years.

Burberry did it too.

Yeah.

Burberry had like some of the most beautiful, like branding and scripting and they just went to this kind of block letter boring thing that everybody else had. Yeah. I mean you, all the fashion houses, basically, it's like they all agreed in the mid, you know, in the early 2000s, late, like late 20 teens. Like let's just all have the exact same font.

Yeah. So. So if you're going to do it, have a story, have a reason and prefer the founder if you don't have the founder. Probably the second choice I think would be a fictitious or animated type thing. And then after that would be the paid actor who I think is the. Probably the paid actor with Equity. And then the worst, least connected is the just the, you know, come in and shout out my thing for. With no connection to it at all. If you can tell.

Yeah, you're going to do that. Do do like just do micro influencer stuff. Like do, do a bun, do a series. If it's going to be transactional, then do a series of small transactional ones as opposed to trying to go all in on transactional relationship. I think those days are gone.

Yeah, I like that. Cool. It was kind of a fun discussion. It was interesting reading that. I was like, oh, we gotta talk about this because.

Do you have a prediction, by the way, what's going to happen to Duo? What do you think?

I would think that they're going to either bring in a relative of Duo like Trio or something like that. I think they lose credibility if Duo's not gone. If they say he's gone. If they say he's, he's killed, he was fatally struck and then he isn't, then I feel like that's, that's pretty, it's, it's deceptive. Like it's just not. It's a trust issue, you know. And so I'm hoping that what they do is they bring in some Duo relative or some other owl or somebody who has some personality that's related. I really love the idea that they introduce a brand new evil character that was driving the cybertruck and then Duo has a brother that comes in and then you've got, you know, you've got some interesting things that'd be kind of fun, I think, but I don't know, it'd be interesting to see. How about you? What do you think is going to happen?

I think Duo is going to come back. I'm way too cynical for this thing. Yeah, I think they're going to.

If, if Duo does come back, what do you think about that?

It'll be obvious that it was just a PR stunt because they were out of ideas.

Right. And it does not be the first.

Time that a brand did that.

But it's going to make you a little distrustful of them or you're just like, ah, okay, that wasn't very cool.

You know, look, I don't, I don't. I never once thought that I could actually learn a foreign language from an app. So I wasn't their ideal customer anyway. But you Know, I guess I'm just kind of a cynical jerk anyway, when it kind of comes. When it comes to a lot of these, like, brand strategies, I'm probably not the ideal. My guess is the average person would sort of forget about it and move on with their lives. So I think that they would. That they'd probably be able to get away with it. Just because most people don't care that much. I think they're going to get.

In which case. In which case it was totally worth it because they've gotten a ton of exposure. Right.

Yeah. And that's. I think that that ultimately is the decision they're going to come to, especially if they didn't go into this with a clear plan of action. Right. They didn't go into this knowing exactly how it's going to end. And they're like, hopefully we'll figure it out as we go along. I bet they take the easy way out, which is, it was a dream. And that's what TV shows have been doing for decades. I wouldn't. Who have, like, professional writers, by the way. I wouldn't put it past a brand. If they ultimately came to the same conclusion of, well, it seemed like a good idea to kill them off, but we don't have anything better to come up with it.

So let's crowdsourcing, though. I like that they're like, what do you guys think happened? And let the, you know, rumor mill speculate wildly. I think that's kind of fun and. And feeds the continual fire of discussion across the, you know, I agree.

I think it's smart. I just think when nobody comes up with any particularly amazingly great standout because the other downside is, let's say some. Somebody does come out with an idea and everybody agrees that it's a great idea, and then they do exactly that. That's boring. So, yeah, I don't know. I think they're kind of damned if they do, damned if they don't, so they might as well just do whatever.

They want to do. Fair enough. I like it. Awesome. Well, hopefully you guys found that was helpful. If you have any thoughts on what we talked about, we'd love to hear from you. All the socials, Ryan's name, my name. And we'll see you next time on Business Lunch.

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