Sometimes established brands fall into their own trap of knowing that there is a shelf-life of their brand perception—either for the brand message, or brand personality, or their core mission, or some other brand identifier. Their leaders might develop a nagging feeling of—”Let’s do something about who we are and how we have been doing it for a while.” is a massive internal challenge.
This unclear pull of ‘we are evolving’ vs ‘we are not evolving enough’ is a bit misplaced.
Of course they see it is an opportunity to strengthen their presence; however, we see many examples where it misfires. I guess this is what is happening with Duolingo at the moment, as this Inc story shows—”For many who believed in Duolingo’s original mission—to democratize access to language education—this isn’t just a technological shift. It’s a shift in values.”
I saw these signs somewhere else too, for example when they announced to rename their UX function to Product Experience, around two months ago in this LinkedIn post.
As I wrote in this post, renaming a function is not about the processes or the positioning or the employee sentiment when they work in design or products, it is deep into the foundations too. All these recent developments—renaming UX to product experience, and now this Inc. story show that signs of internal clarity is missing somewhere in Duolingo.
Guess what could have made a positive influence in this story? Content strategy. I am sure some of my content and UX friends can understand what I mean and for others—well, it is never too late to learn how.
