Language Learning Through Licensing

Language-learning apps have been entering into promotional deals with licensed properties for close to a decade, with many of the partnerships having a content component. Properties involved tend to skew toward character/entertainment and celebrity IP, although there are other examples as well. For the language-learning platforms, such pairings spur sampling and potentially new subscriptions, while differentiating them from their competitors in this increasingly crowded market. For the property owners, the primary goal is often to increase fan engagement, as well as to raise awareness for a particular property or initiative. 

The frequency of these deals seems to be on the rise in the last couple of years, with more property types and language-learning brands becoming involved: 

• Duolingo is the leader when it comes to collaborations. Last month, it worked with Netflix on a “Learn Korean or Else” campaign tied to the second season of Squid Game; the app had seen a 40% increase in users trying its Korean course after Season 1 of the show. The campaign included adding more than 40 keywords and phrases from the TV series to Duolingo’s Korean language course and putting Duolingo’s owl mascot, Duo, in the uniform of the series’ Pink Guards. Other elements included a teaser video, K-pop remix of the Pink Guards’ theme song, billboards in Koreatowns in Los Angeles and New York, and a TikTok filter. Duolingo also paired in July 2024 with HoYoverse, producers of the Genshin Impact videogame, for a purely promotional tie-in involving comic-con appearances by the costumed Duo dressed as a character from the game, as well as complementary redemption codes for both the game and the language app. In May 2023, Duolingo paired with Crunchyroll to create anime-specific Japanese lessons, encompassing close to 50 phrases from popular anime series; anime is one of the main reasons English speakers say they learn Japanese. Redemption codes for Crunchyroll streaming and a two-month trial of the SuperDuolingo premium offering were also included. And, back in July 2021, the app paired with Corona for a pop-up voice-activated vending machine containing the company’s then-new Hard Seltzer Limonada, with Duolingo teaching purchasers how to correctly pronounce the name of the drink. 

• Warner Bros. Pictures joined in August 2023 with Memrise to create two language-learning adventures inspired by the DC Comics superhero Blue Beetle, along with the character’s family, who play a central role in the property. Blue Beetle starred in a feature film released at that time. The exclusive promotion gave English speakers the opportunity to learn Spanish and Spanish speakers the opportunity to learn English through the Memrise platform, aided by images, video clips, and phrases from the film. Blue Beetle and his alter ego, Jaime Reyes, are Latino and bilingual.  

• Lingoda partnered in June 2022 with Jo Franco, travel influencer and host of the Netflix show The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals, who speaks several languages in order to converse better with local citizens on her travels. She spent two months learning German through a Lingoda Language Sprint intensive learning course, consisting of individual and group lessons, and then traveled to Berlin for five days to demonstrate whether the course gave her the skills to speak with the residents. In June 2023, Franco, whose community of followers is also interested in learning foreign languages, reteamed with Lingoda to host a journaling event for language learners called “Learn Languages & Design a Multilingual Life,” available via Zoom on her JoClub journaling site and on Lingoda. 

• Drops paired in 2021 with K-pop star Amber Liu, who is a soloist and former member of the group f(x), for a limited-time “Study with Amber” promotion early in the year in which Liu curated and voiced hundreds of Korean words across 40 topics, including K-pop, Korean food, K-drama, travel, and more. Users of the Drops app benefited from the experience Liu brought in learning Korean; she is American-born with parents from Taiwan, and became fluent in Korean so she could perform, participate in media opportunities, and engage with fans in South Korea after she moved there in 2008 to join f(x). Korean was Drops’ most popular language offering, driven in large part by K-pop fans. 

• Babbel was an early player in the collaboration space, highlighting the Netflix series Narcos for a “Speak Spanish like El Patrón” lesson in 2016 to help users learn Spanish with vocabulary inspired by the show about drug kingpins. The educational content featured images and audio from the series, adapted for use in learning “Narco-Spanish” in the context of six of Babbel’s courses: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Not all promotional deals between licensed properties and these and other language-learning apps involve content. Rosetta Stone’s December 2024 pairing with USA Boxing, for example, provides members of the latter organization, many of whom are learning English, with subscriptions to Rosetta Stone, rather than using boxing-related themes as part of its language-learning lessons. 

Outbound licensing centered on language apps is also starting to emerge, with Duolingo leading the way to date. It signed with Crocs in August of this year for a limited-edition pair of Crocs featuring the lime-green color of Duo along with Jibbitz charms inspired by the character, available online and through a Duolingo Streak Society Pop-Up in New York City, for which visitors had to take a Duolingo lesson to gain entry. And, in October 2024, the company licensed Webtoon for a new five-episode miniseries called Duolingo Unleashed!, supported by a presence at New York Comic Con and featuring a code for a two-month free trial of SuperDuolingo for users who read all five episodes. 

In case you missed it over the holidays, Raugust Communications recently posted its annual summary of the licensing trends of the year, with this edition featuring 30 key trends that helped shape the licensing business in 2024. You can read it here.