For the new Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, Duolingo partnered with HBO Max to create High Valyrian lessons that teach fans the fictional language from the show and launched them through a series of social media activations.

To launch the lessons, Duolingo enlisted their in-house influencer Duo the Owl to

host a challenge with a life-size Valyrian Steel sword as the prize and exchange weekly episodic tweets in High Valyrian with HBO Max. Then, Duo the Owl showed up in real-life at HBO Max’s Comic-Con event to claim the iron throne as seen in viral TikTok videos.

As the world’s #1 language learning app, Duolingo knows entertainment content drives interest in language learning and vice versa. From K-pop music to television shows like Squid Game, our data shows a direct correlation between user growth and what’s happening in the cultural zeitgeist.

So when HBO Max announced a new prequel to the Game of Thrones series named House of the Dragon, Duolingo saw an opportunity to engage fans on social and drive interest in language learning. The aim was to own the conversation around the most anticipated TV show of the year. How? By turning our iconic mascot into an influencer.

For the new Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, Duolingo partnered with HBO Max to create High Valyrian lessons that teach fans the fictional language from the show and launched them on social media.

From season premiere to finale, Duo the Owl shared High Valyrian lessons on social, hosted a challenge with a life-size Valyrian Steel sword as the prize, and exchanged weekly tweets in High Valyrian with HBO Max. And, Duo the Owl showed up in real-life at HBO Max’s Comic-Con event to claim the iron throne as seen in viral TikTok videos.

By tapping into the insight that nearly half of those who learn a fictional language go on to learn a real one next, we focused on promoting a magical made-up language that would receive attention on social while knowing that fans would eventually sign up for our other real languages down the line.

HBO Max was looking to engage fans after the original Game of Thrones series had ended years before. Knowing millennials, who make up Duolingo’s target audience, are obsessed with Game of Thrones and the new House of the Dragon series would feature its fictional language, we were confident an idea based on High Valyrian would speak to our audience too. We also knew nearly half of those who sign up for a fictional language go on to learn another like Spanish or French next.

So we turned this insight into a cultural phenomenon by partnering with HBO Max to create real High Valyrian lessons on Duolingo. We focused on the most relevant channels for this audience (Reddit, Twitter, TikTok) and launched during the week of HBO Max's immersive experience at Comic-Con to maximize social reach.

We developed our High Valyrian lessons with the inventor of the language himself, David Peterson. The course and corresponding social content taught fans real phrases from episodes such as “Umbās” and “Lykirī”, which also doubled as dragon commands in HBO Max’s new augmented reality app.

For launch, Duo the Owl shared an iconic illustration of himself sitting on the iron throne. Then, he showed up in real-life at HBO Max’s Comic-Con activation to claim the iron throne and encourage learners to do their lessons as seen in our viral TikTok.

To keep the dialogue going all season long, Duo the Owl exchanged weekly tweets in High Valyrian with HBO Max after every episode. And to add another plot twist, he hosted a challenge where learners battled it out on the Duolingo leaderboard for the #1 spot. The prize? A life-size Valyrian Steel sword engraved with a secret phrase.

“High Valyrian Lessons” became the #1 most talked about campaign for Duolingo ever and helped drive fans to HBO Max’s most watched premiere in history. The unexpected partnership generated 700M earned media impressions around the world with a single TikTok video receiving 10.8M views alone and led to more than 150 press mentions. The campaign created a lasting cultural impact with one learner going viral after she decided to hold her entire wedding in High Valyrian. The success of the social campaign was even featured during our quarterly earnings report. So far over 300,000 fans have started learning High Valyrian, but most importantly 43% of them will go on to learn another real language like Spanish or French next.