Summary
Akhon Bangla Janle, Engriji Easy: While announcing the launch of its new language course Duolingo, recognized the sensitivity of promoting English in Bengal – (Bengalis take immense pride in their culture and language) Our campaign celebrates Bangla's richness, portraying English as complementary, not superior. Leveraging Bengal's passions—music, food, and Kolkata, we showcased how knowing Bangla makes mastering English effortless. The campaign's impact was evident, with a staggering 400% surge in daily active users.
Challenge
Objective: After Hindi, Bangla is India's second most spoken language. To strengthen its position in India and attract more learners to the app, which can then be monetized through paid subscriptions. Duolingo sought to gain these new users and expand its presence in the regional market. The challenge for Duolingo in India: - Even though it is claimed that India has the largest population of English speakers globally outside of the US, with 129 million English speakers across 29 states, less than 10% of the total population speak English. In other words, 90% of the population needs English learning resources. - With every state and its dominant language, penetration for the brand in the Indian market comes with the baggage of going vernacular (not optional) - Bengalis take immense pride in their culture and language, and asking them to learn English from Bangla may sound condescending.
Objective
Duolingo is the most downloaded education app in the world with over 500 million registered users, and 37 million are active once a month. Duolingo It has 100+ available courses in 38 languages available on its platform. While the Hindi to English course was one of the most popular courses in India, there was an untapped market of the regions where Hindi is not a commonly spoken language in India - like West Bengal. According to the 2011 linguistic census, there are 9.3 crore Bangla speakers in West Bengal, out of which around 63 lakh people speak Hindi as their second language while only about 15,000 speak English. The Bangla community is a guarded community - extremely proud of their language and heritage with set boundaries.
Strategy
‘Akhon Bangla Janle Engriji Easy' (if you know Bangla then English is easy) to convey that if you know a language as complex, rich and elevated as Bangla, then learning English would be relatively easy for you. Our campaign strategy involved showcasing how learning English is Moja, Soja and free (Fun, Free & Effective) through Bangla cultural nuances across OOH, Metro, Digital and developed baul (bangla folk) inspired jingles for the entire state to hear- 1) OOH across West Bengal To capture our TG's attention we connected location and behaviour data to create contextual billboards in high-visibility zones like usual office zones, highways near the airport and popular hangout spots. 2) Tie up with Sweet shops: We partnered with famous sweet shops across the state to create branded sweet boxes since sweets are an integral part of Bengali culture. 3) Highlight the ease & affordability of the Duolingo app. To demonstrate to users the ease of use of the Duolingo app we created special 'route charts' in the Kolkata metro that taught Bengalis a phrase in English while traveling. 4) Top of mind recall We created jingles inspired by Bengali folk songs that were played across radio channels for brand recall. 5) Targeted ads We used cultural parallels to compose folk-inspired songs to be used as reels,posts and YouTube videos that best portrayed the fun,free and easy nature of Duolingo.
Data
With the only active campaign at that time, the campaign helped us increase the popularity and usage of Bangla to English course on the app course as it became the 2nd most popular course in India and the DAUs saw a spike of 400% during that period.
Solution
Results
1. 400% increase in daily active users in just two weeks. (DAUs are significant as they represent actual people spending time on the app) 2. Kolkata became no. 3 city from no. 9 for new language learners. 3. The Bangla-English course became the 2nd largest after the Hindi-English course.
