Away's Genius Media Campaign, Deel Asking Rippling to Eat a D*ck, and Duolingo's Move to YT Shorts

Spotify’s yearly Wrapped just came out - I’m in my Coastal Grandmother Neo Mellow Yacht Rock phase for those of y’all wondering

Now for those of you weirdos who don’t care for your Spotify Wrapped, here’s three much more interesting news items from the marketing world that I picked up today.

Away Brings In “Look-alike” Competition Winners for Its Campaign - And We’re All For It!

Remember that “Look-alike competition” trend that got people blowing up social last month?

Just in case you’ve been sheltered from the craziness that is New York, a bunch of organizers held a celebrity look-alike competition - winner gets a 50-dollar prize bucket and the honor of being the best celebrity impersonator on the planet…. I know, the bar is really that low for honor these days.

However…..

The competitions got so wholesome and viral that we had competition after competition popping up all over the city. From Timothée Chalamet to Jeremy Allen White to Glen Powell (I knowwww) - everyone got their own look-alike competition.

And the crowd loved it! We all did.

But Away won the marketing game with this trend. In a brilliant move, the luggage company rounded up popular lookalike competition winners from last month to promote its products.

I like this kind of virality hacking - making use of popular trends to brand yourself by simply jumping on the bandwagon. Only you need to add your own twist to it, else you’re just a needle in the haystack

Swiggy pulled this off brilliantly as well - bringing in everyone from Dolly Chaiwala to Ganji Chudail - crazy stuff. People love this!

We Got SaaS Bro Beefs Before GTA VI

Competitors taking a dig at each other is just another Tuesday in most cases.

Except, today’s Wednesday - and people on LinkedIn are sour.

Earlier today, Rippling CRO Matt Plank shared a post of one of their LinkedIn ads, and a funny story to go with it :)

In a very daring Ad targeting Deel users, Rippling asked its audience to “Not buy Snake Oil“

“Good news: They know who’s beating them. Bad news: They’re selling snake oil“

That’s a hall-of-fame jab right there.

A jab below the belt, but still, nothing too out of pocket. I found it funny. Head of Sales at Deel, Chris Lee, did not find it funny

Or maybe he did find it funny, and just sent out a friendly banter :)

LinkedIn had mixed feelings about this little stunt, though.

I’m with Gino on this one, but yeah, to each their own. Point is, it made for big PR for both Rippling and Deel. Whether that’s good PR or bad, only time will tell

Duolingo Takes On Youtube Shorts

The genius behind Duolingo’s virality, Zaria Parvez, shared on her newsletter today that the brand is going to focus a lot more on Youtube.

Duolingo built its social brand on Tiktok by being the absolute nutjob green-owl that no one could ignore, and it’s no doubt that it is going to take over Youtube the same way.

But Zaria mentioned something in her newsletter that I found really interesting:

This is insightful because it gives you a little peak into how minds like Zaria’s are thinking about building brand.

You cannot just depend on trends your whole-life, and while TikTok and Instagram are great for Stardom, long-term retention and user loyalty is built by staying on your users’ minds 24/7 - something Youtube is really good at doing.

I won’t be surprised if the team at Duolingo also moves into long-form content in 2025. That’s where the entire world is heading.

That’s it for today folks. I’ll keep sharing more interesting learnings from my marketing career every day on this newsletter, so share it with all your friends. Might help someone out :)