Duolingo’s cast of mascots have become a beloved part of the brand’s product and marketing. They have their own backstories and lore, and have even spawned their own Reddit fan communities.
Duo the Owl is the iconic star of the brand, but Lily is the cult fan favorite. She’s moody, mysterious, and emo. In short, she’s a teenager, and Duolingo’s fans love her snark.
Duolingo wanted to stoke fandom around the character and give her the spotlight she deserves, and they engaged Loop to help tell her story in a social-first medium. Our goal was to capture the essence of this lovable character and delve into the quirk that made her a viral star of the brand.
Lily is at her best when she is playing off of another character. Judging, ignoring, going out of her way to be unimpressed… Lily thrives when she can (lovingly) crush another character’s spirit. We thought this made her the perfect lead for a sitcom, and explored the format as a medium to tell her story.
We developed the 10-part comedy series “Living With Lily” to follow the unenthusiastic, purple-haired teen, and her upbeat family as they go about their lives, pining for Lily’s love and respect. The show, set in a nostalgic 90’s era ‘live audience’ style home, reveals her surprisingly normal suburban backstory with some sarcastic and unhinged plot twists. It’s a hilarious spin on a classic sitcom format, and is set to a soundtrack written and performed by The Gregory Brothers, famous for viral hits like the “Bed Intruder” and “It’s Corn” songs.
In the series, Lily and her human family go through normal family stuff, but nobody acknowledges that Lily is a mascot. In fact, we don’t even know if Lily knows that she is a mascot. That tension creates a lot of room for absurd comedy, which is perfect for the Duolingo brand.
All ten episodes of “Living With Lily” launched simultaneously on YouTube and TikTok, and the pilot is also available on Duolingo’s Instagram.
The series was the first-ever on YouTube Shorts pushing the limits of what’s possible on the platform. Since launch, it has amassed over 32M views and 1.7M likes, and driven over 200k followers on the Duolingo account.
The series also spread quickly on TikTok, growing the brand new @lily account from literally zero to 314.5k followers, 4 million likes, and over 27M organic views.
It has also elicited a flood of enthusiastic calls for a streaming provider to greenlight an extended version of “the best show ever.” @KingNiallStoyles called it “such a beautiful masterpiece” And the audience is begging for season two.
