Duolingo walked so Squid Game Season 2 could run
📰 NoGood News | Vol. 84
Hi NoGoodies,
Before we jump into another round of the NoGood News, here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:
Duolingo ended 2024 with the greatest collab - Squid Game
Here’s why this Squid Game collab was more successful than the others
It’s time to revamp your SEO strategy for 2025
Positive mobile UX is integral as screen time continues to rise
Learn about the best mobile user experience practices for 2025
Ready? Let's get into it.
🇰🇷 Duolingo ended 2024 with the greatest collab — Squid Game
Here’s why this collab was successful compared to others
Watching Squid Game dubbed isn’t worth it.
That’s why Netflix collaborated with Duolingo to promote Squid Game Season 2. 🇰🇷
Squid Game also collaborated with other brands like Domino’s, Puma, Johnnie Walker, and McDonalds, but Duolingo took the crown for the best collaboration by far.
What made this collab stand out from the rest?
Besides their “Korean or get eaten” song, their in-app initiative is what showed the strategic intentionality that some of the other collabs lacked.
Duolingo incorporated over 40 Squid Game words and phrases into their Korean course.
They also dressed their Duo owl in the iconic "pink guards" outfit from the show.
By learning Korean, Squid Game fans can appreciate the series on a new level through dialogue, expressions, and cultural context.
This collab is insight-driven too.
After Season 1, there was a 40% increase in Korean learners – demonstrating a clear connection between entertainment, culture, and language learning.
By integrating the Squid Game storyline into the app itself, Duolingo goes a step further than typical brand collaborations by driving their users to actually experience the tangible value of their product.
What did you think about the Duolingo x Netflix collab?
🧠 It’s time to revamp our SEO strategy for 2025
Read about our 7 SEO trend predictions for 2025
From the growing importance of AI-powered search to the rise of voice and visual search, it’s time for SEO marketers to find ways to adapt to an increasingly sophisticated search ecosystem.
Humans and AI will work together to produce H-E-A-T content: Ensuring that a piece of content meets each of these standards will become even more important.
AI tools will continue to evolve to support SEO strategy: AI tools can help identify potential issues and suggest solutions.
SEO for Bing will become a larger focus: With the introduction of ChatGPT’s new ability to search the web, this LLM is pulling search results from Bing – not Google.
Search will continue to become multi-modal: More and more users are turning to search functions on social media, answer engines like ChatGPT or Perplexity, or voice search.
Video will dominate as a favored type of organic content: Including a variety of media – especially video – in your organic content and SEO strategies will be a key component of success in 2025.
Reputation management will eclipse traditional backlink building: Reputation management and digital public relations (PR) practices will be the new approach.
How we understand organic attribution will change: As Google’s AI Overviews and other AI-powered search modalities continue to expand, zero-click searches will only increase.
As you refine your approach, remember: the heart of great SEO lies in delivering value, relevance, and exceptional experiences to your users.
📱 Positive mobile UX is integral as screen time continues to rise
Learn about the best mobile user experience practices for 2025
Users typically have two main goals: (1) complete an action with the least amount of resistance; and (2) find the key information they’re looking for.
Mobile UX should ensure it’s as easy as possible for users to meet those goals.
Screen size: It’s important to prioritize essential content and think about the hierarchy of information so users can easily see key actions.
Navigation: The main thing to consider is how many categories your user may be trying to navigate to, and what is the most seamless way to get there.
Interactions: It’s important to consider the touch target size, which is the minimum surface area that users can tap to interact with their finger.
Location & context: Considering what critical information can be accessed for the user even in the offline state involves designing with intention.
User expectations: Ensuring screens are simplified to have a primary task per screen and not overwhelming users with options or choices to make.
Frequency of use: Mobile users often have shorter sessions than desktop users. This means thinking about how quickly users might need to find something or alternative ways of taking actions such as voice commands.
🎙️ Q&A with an expert
A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game
Q: How will marketing analytics change going into 2025?
A: In 2025, marketing analytics will move toward real-time, predictive, and causal analytics-to keep up with the dynamic nature of the markets in which business operates and with heightened accountability from the C-suite. Data visualization tools used traditionally to understand historical performance will become less relevant as active, relational analytics serves as a GPS for marketing strategy. This calls for improved planning, forecasting, and optimization to keep pace with shifting customer demands and businesses.
Q: How will the rise of AI and machine learning impact our approaches to marketing analytics going forward?
A: AI and machine learning will revolutionize how we think about and approach marketing analytics. These technologies will enhance not just operational efficiency but, more importantly, teams will have richer and more actionable insights. However, their full impact will significantly depend on how well teams adopt and apply them. This, of course, also means marketers will have to upskill themselves, as there will be increasing integration of AI-driven insights in their decision-making. In other words, AI will not replace human expertise but amplify it to push marketing strategies to new heights.
✍️ We wish we wrote this
A curated list of the past 2 weeks’ must-read articles:
5 AI trends that will takeover in 2025
Squid Game Season 2 can thank social media for its buzz
Hot take: grading generative AI on a curve is outdated
👀 Keeping up on the socials
Because we know you like to stay in the know:
Unfiltered marketing predictions for 2025 that you may not agree with.
Are influencer products overrated?
The color of 2025 isn’t what you think it is…
🔥 Trend Radar: Blow up or fall behind
The trending topics, sounds, and formats to key and eye on:
Fake college acceptance reaction video
Sabrina Carpetner’s Slim Pickens song is popping off
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