For the new Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, Duolingo partnered with HBO Max to offer a magical experience: High Valyrian lessons that teach fans the fictional language from the show.

We created a cohesive experience for fans across multiple touchpoints, including a real-life appearance by Duo the Owl on the iron throne at HBO Max's immersive Comic-Con event, cryptic billboards that served as High Valyrian lessons, and an in-app learning challenge with a life-size Valyrian Steel sword as the prize.

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 join the conversation and drive brand awareness. The aim was to create an integrated brand experience that would engage Game of Thrones fans and drive interest in learning on Duolingo. How? By speaking the show’s language.

For the new Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, Duolingo partnered with HBO Max to create a magical experience: High Valyrian lessons that teach fans the fictional language from the show.

Then, we launched the lessons ahead of the season premiere with multiple activations, including cryptic billboards written all in High Valyrian, a learning challenge with a life-size Valyrian Steel sword as the prize, and a real-life appearance by Duo the Owl on the iron throne at HBO Max’s immersive Comic-Con event.

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 unique experience 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 Comic-Con to maximize awareness. After all, who better to teach fantasy fans the language of legendary dragonlords, than the world’s #1 language learning app?

To give learners a cohesive and high-quality learning experience, we developed our High Valyrian lessons with the inventor of the language himself, David Peterson. The experience 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.

Ahead of the season premiere, we bombarded Times Square and Comic-Con with cryptic billboards written in High Valyrian. Then, Duo the Owl showed up in real-life at HBO Max’s Comic-Con immersive event 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, we exchanged weekly episodic tweets in High Valyrian with HBO Max. And to add another plot twist, we hosted a challenge where learners battled it out on the Duolingo leaderboard for the #1 spot. The prize? A custom life-size Valyrian Steel sword.

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 magical experience generated more than 150 press mentions and 700M earned media impressions around the world with a single TikTok video receiving 10.8M views alone. The campaign created lasting cultural impact with one learner even deciding to hold her entire wedding in High Valyrian. The sentiment following the campaign was overwhelmingly positive. So far over 300,000 fans have started learning High Valyrian, but most importantly 43% of them will go on to learn another language like Spanish or French next.