¹Keenan Jeremy Kusuma, ²Choirunnisak Fauziati, ^3*Angel Damayanti

^1,2Universitas Indonesia

³Universitas Kristen Indonesia

DOI : https://doi.org/10.58806/ijsshmr.2025.v4i6n22

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ABSTRACT

In September 2023, Duolingo was deemed the most-used language learning application worldwide, with over 16 million downloads, and it showed a consistent increase in downloads since 2017. This paper aims to examine how the integration of memes and unhinged content in Duolingo's marketing on social media is successful in maintaining customer engagement. The method used here is qualitative content analysis. Further, Katz's and Blumer's uses and gratifications theory about how people seek specific content to generate specific gratifications is used to find out how the audience perceives Duolingo's content fulfilling their desire. Moreover, the paper also concerns the humorous communications for marketing which is also pertinent due to correlating with Duolingo's marketing strategy. The research argues that Duolingo's creativity in unhinged content in their social marketing succeeds in consumer engagement, which will be recommendations for marketing practitioners to enhance social and content gratifications.

KEYWORDS:

brand identity, consumer engagement, Duolingo, social media, unhinged marketing

REFERENCES

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VOlUME 04 ISSUE 06 JUNE 2025