Duolingo comms head Sam Dalsimer leads 'wholesome unhinged' strategy

Duolingo has risen in popularity in large part due to its “unhinged” personality on social media.

The latest Duolingo stunt that sent the internet into a frenzy and garnered significant media attention? The death—and return—of the language learning app’s green owl mascot, Duo.

“It's the biggest thing I've seen happen in my time here in terms of cultural impact and response,” says Duolingo’s global head of communications, Sam Dalsimer. “It's a result of our social-first marketing strategy and close collaboration between our marketing and product teams. Our PR teams around the world have been extremely busy answering questions like who killed Duo and why.”

But Dalsimer doesn’t want his team to be painted with that same brush. He likes to label the company’s comms strategy as “wholesome unhinged.”

Dalsimer notes that brand mascot Duo the Owl’s “wacky” personality on social media is balanced by the more “wholesome” side of the nocturnal bird seen within the product and app.

“In that setting, Duo is your helpful coach who is there to encourage you to keep going and reward you for the progress you have made,” says Dalsimer.

When it comes to communications, an unhinged tone and style doesn’t work as a strategy, so it has never been adapted to Duolingo’s media relations and PR work.

“A huge part of my role is working with reporters, sharing information and news with them in a way that is credible, transparent and trustworthy,” says Dalsimer. “So unhinged doesn't help with that.”

Dalsimer is an avid Duolingo fan and has been using it to learn Spanish for years. He joined the language app eight years ago as head of PR and has been in his current role since 2021.

He reports to CMO Manu Orssaud but explains that Duolingo didn’t even have marketing positions for his first two years at the company.

“There was no marketing budget at the time,” Dalsimer says. “Now, PR and comms is part of a larger integrated marketing team.”

Social media sits within the brand marketing team and does not fall directly under comms.

Dalsimer oversees corporate and consumer comms, has two direct reports internally and works with Edelman in the U.S.

Duolingo’s AI story

On the consumer PR side, AI has been a key narrative and strategic focus. Founded in 2011, Duolingo has been an AI company since its early days, but within the past two years it has become a priority to describe how “well-positioned” the app is to benefit from AI, says Dalsimer.

“[We want to] take advantage of this moment where generative AI is the hot thing that everyone is building with and talking about,” he explains.

The company is promoting a new subscription called Duolingo Max, which contains its “most advanced and innovative” AI features. One of those is Video Call, which allows users to engage in spontaneous, realistic conversations with an AI chatbot named Lily.

The Video Call feature “represents a huge leap forward in terms of our vision to use technology to recreate the experience of a human tutor,” says Dalsimer. It gives users real conversation practice in a foreign language they are learning.

Lily also appeared during Duolingo’s Q3 earnings call, stepping in briefly for CEO and cofounder Luis von Ahn to summarize the results in a quick video.

That was done to “show off the technology and highlight its importance,” Dalsimer explains.

Tapping into fandoms

For full-year 2024, Duolingo’s revenue was $748 million, up 41% from full-year 2023; the company’s net income for the full year was $88.6 million, a 451% increase from full-year 2023; and its profit margin was 12%, up from 3% in FY 2023. The increase in margin was driven by higher revenue.

By the end of 2024, the number of Duolingo paid subscribers climbed to 9.5 million worldwide, up by around 43% year over year, according to Duolingo’s earnings report. 

Duolingo has high brand awareness and saturation in the U.S. in terms of people who already use the product, so part of Dalsimer’s role is helping to reach more niche audiences.

“We try to do that through different fandoms or interests, whether that is people who enjoy watching shows such as Squid Game on Netflix and also want to learn Korean, or people who enjoy Japanese animation and manga and want to learn that language with us,” he says.

In December, for the premiere of season 2 of Squid Game, Duolingo partnered with Netflix to launch a campaign called Learn Korean or Else to motivate fans to do their Korean lessons.

Dalsimer’s team was also able to get media attention in January with a major newsjacking moment. TikTok’s China-based parent ByteDance was supposed to find a U.S. buyer or be banned on January 19. The app went dark for 12 hours, but President Donald Trump signed an executive order delaying enforcement of the ban until April.

During that time, people were looking at RedNote as a potential alternative to TikTok. However, because RedNote’s default language is Mandarin Chinese, Duolingo suddenly noticed roughly 216% growth in U.S. users signing up to learn Mandarin on its app.

Dalsimer’s team quickly went to the analytics department to request the data proving Duolingo was experiencing the spike. Within a few hours, Duolingo posted about it on X.

“That put us at the center of the media cycle where everyone was talking about the TikTok ban,” says Dalsimer. “Duolingo was positioned in some of the coverage as one of the unexpected winners of the ban. We received an avalanche of press coverage.”

He adds that being able to move quickly and take advantage of rare opportunities to generate big earned media spikes when hard news is not involved is “one of the most exciting and amazing things we get to do.”

Duolingo is popular on TikTok, with 15.9 million followers on the video-sharing platform. But Dalsimer is not worried about a potential ban.

“We’ve been preparing for the TikTok ban for over a year by diversifying our content onto other platforms,” explains Dalsimer. “We’ve been posting on YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels for over a year and building our audiences there.”

Duolingo also has an extensive international presence and can still use its TikTok accounts in other markets if the ban continues.

Getting reporters’ attention

In 2021, after Duolingo debuted on the public market, Dalsimer expected an “organic growth” of beat reporters covering the company. But that was not actually the case.

“We’re in this interesting position where we’re not big tech — the Apples, Googles and Amazons of the world that have a dedicated set of beat reporters who will cover our earnings,” says Dalsimer.

On the corporate comms side, one strategic priority for Dalsimer’s team has been developing Duolingo’s own set of beat reporters.

“Growing awareness of our existence and performance as a public company has been a key priority,” he says.

The comms team also has an editorial function, which involves things such as Duolingo’s blog and in-app news feed.

Additionally, the comms team is behind Duocon, an event where Duolingo announces its biggest product news of the year.

After six years, Duocon has turned into a “really powerful platform” for Duolingo to generate global news, Dalsimer says. Special guests at the event have included Trevor Noah, Jon Batiste, José Andres and Malala Yousafzai.

“It’s not only become a big news moment for us, but also a rallying point for the entire company to come together and celebrate each other’s work,” explains Dalsimer. “At first, it was a smaller community of our learners paying attention, but now it draws attention from press and investors as well.”

Duolingo has also been “leaning into LinkedIn” to promote executives’ visibility and thought leadership.

Reflecting on the work of Dalsimer’s team, CMO Orssaud notes that Duolingo’s communications work has been critical to the company’s success.

"At Duolingo, PR isn’t just about securing headlines—it’s about shaping how the world sees us,” says Orssaud. “Through creative storytelling, tapping into cultural moments and being quick and agile with spotting new opportunities, they’ve helped make Duolingo one of the most talked-about brands.”