Don't be deterred by criticism from industry peers. Zaria Parvez of Duolingo views it as a positive indicator. If marketers dislike your work but consumers love it, you're successfully breaking through the marketing echo chamber and connecting with your actual audience.
This framework balances efforts: "Bonfires" are daily content; "Campfires" are smaller activations; and "Fireworks" are the one big, internet-breaking original moment per quarter. This structure helps teams balance reactive work with ambitious, proactive creative campaigns and allocate resources accordingly, as used by Zaria Parvez.
Duolingo's leadership actively pushed Zaria Parvez to be the public face of her viral social media work, putting her in major interviews. This culture is a win-win: it builds the employee's personal brand while making the company an attractive destination for top talent who want recognition for their contributions.
When Duolingo's Zaria Parvez made a controversial post, her CMO framed the misstep as a necessary learning experience. This cultural attitude towards risk-taking encourages the creative experimentation required for breakthrough social media, turning a potential firing into a valuable lesson on brand boundaries.
Five years ago, success on TikTok came from quickly hopping on trends. According to Duolingo's Zaria Parvez, that strategy is now saturated. Brands that stand out today prioritize unique creative that isn't trend-dependent, as consumers have grown tired of seeing dozens of brands doing the same thing.
Zaria Parvez started at Duolingo with a "naive mindset," unaware that corporate social posts typically require layers of approval. This unintentional freedom allowed her to think like a creator, not an advertiser, leading to the spontaneous, risky content that defined the brand's voice and sparked its initial viral growth.
Instead of simply announcing a temporary app icon change, Duolingo's social team created a multi-week narrative where their mascot died. This transformed a routine product decision into a massive, co-created story with the community, showing how social-first thinking can amplify even small product updates into major brand moments.