Dove and Duolingo set a high precedent in the social media advertising landscape.

Wow, what a year! From spy balloons to a new country added into NATO (yay, Finland!) 2023 was memorable for many reasons. The year, however, was not just memorable politically. The social media realm experienced a 7.07% increase in active users when compared to 2022. With the emergence of new users across various platforms, brands have continued to hone in on social media as their main platform for advertising. Among all of the different social media campaigns this past year, two major brand’s creative sides shined brightly: Duolingo and Dove.

Duolingo sat back quietly while Netflix got publicly shamed about their new password sharing ban. Instead of joining Netflix in their quest to get more money, they decided to implement their ‘Duolingo Adoption Center’ campaign. This campaign originally debuted on Instagram in September 2023, receiving praise from over 13,000 people. The campaign allows users who are subscribed to Duolingo with a family plan to ‘adopt’ other users across the platform to fill the unused spots on their plans. Duolingo’s successful social media campaign allows those who can afford the platform to share this luxury to those who cannot. How genius!

Dove is no stranger to the social media campaign hall of fame. Thus, the brand has had an extremely strong social media presence since the beginning of social media advertising. In 2023, Dove debuted their ‘Detox your Feed‘ campaign which encouraged parents to help set a positive tone on their children’s social media feeds regarding body image. This campaign motivated parents of teens and teens to unfollow toxic creators, recognize unhealthy beauty advice, and much more. The campaign urged consumers to post their tips on creating a healthy social media environment with the hashtag #DetoxYourFeed.

Both Duolingo and Dove set an extremely high precedent for other brands utilizing social media for advertising!