THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

Industry

See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Auto See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Beauty See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Business to Business See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Consumer Brand See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Education See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Entertainment See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Financial Services See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Fitness, Health, & Wellness
<br>See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Food & Beverage
See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Gaming See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Government & Politics See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Hospitality See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Insurance See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Live Events See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> News & Media See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Non-Profit See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Pets & Animals See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Pharma & Healthcare See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Real Estate See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Restaurants See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Retail & E-Commerce See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Social Activism See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Sports See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Technology See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Television See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Travel & Tourism See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Wine, Beer & Spirits

Strategy & Engagement

See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Brand Partnership See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Call to Action See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Community Management See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Creative Use of Technology See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> CTV/OTT See previous winners and honorees for Insights and Trends here.</a> <a href=https://shortyawards.com/16th/"https://shortyawards.com/category/16th/data-visualization">See previous winners and honorees for Data Visualization here.</a>"> Data & Insights See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Earned Media See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Event & Experiential See previous winners and honorees here.</a>""> Gamification See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Humor See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Innovative Media Buying Strategy See previous winners and honorees here.</a>""> Integration with Traditional Media See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Internal Communications See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> LGBTQ Community Engagement See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Micro-Influencer Strategy See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Multicultural Community Engagement See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Music & Dance See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> On a Shoestring See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Organic Promotion See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Paid & Amplification See previous winner and honorees here.</a>"> Physical and Digital Convergence See previous winner and honorees here.</a>"> Public Service Announcement See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Real Time Response See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> SEO & SEM See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Social Commerce See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Storytelling
From the 16th Annual Shorty Awards

Duolingo - 'Living With Lily'

Winner in Education, YouTube Presence

Finalist in Consumer Brand, TikTok Presence, Humor, Comedy Video

Gold Honor in Branded Series

Objectives

Duolingo’s cast of mascots have become a beloved part of the brand’s product and marketing. They have their own backstories and lore, and have even spawned their own Reddit fan communities.

Duo the Owl is the iconic star of the brand, but Lily is the cult fan favorite. She’s moody, mysterious, and emo. In short, she’s a teenager, and Duolingo’s fans love her snark.

Duolingo wanted to stoke fandom around the character and give her the spotlight she deserves, and they engaged Loop to help tell her story in a social-first medium. Our goal was to capture the essence of this lovable character and delve into the quirk that made her a viral star of the brand.

 

Strategy and Execution

Lily is at her best when she is playing off of another character. Judging, ignoring, going out of her way to be unimpressed… Lily thrives when she can (lovingly) crush another character’s spirit. We thought this made her the perfect lead for a sitcom, and explored the format as a medium to tell her story.

We developed the 10-part comedy series “Living With Lily” to follow the unenthusiastic, purple-haired teen, and her upbeat family as they go about their lives, pining for Lily’s love and respect. The show, set in a nostalgic 90’s era ‘live audience’ style home, reveals her surprisingly normal suburban backstory with some sarcastic and unhinged plot twists. It’s a hilarious spin on a classic sitcom format, and is set to a soundtrack written and performed by The Gregory Brothers, famous for viral hits like the “Bed Intruder” and “It’s Corn” songs. 

In the series, Lily and her human family go through normal family stuff, but nobody acknowledges that Lily is a mascot. In fact, we don’t even know if Lily knows that she is a mascot. That tension creates a lot of room for absurd comedy, which is perfect for the Duolingo brand. 

All ten episodes of “Living With Lily” launched simultaneously on YouTube and TikTok, and the pilot is also available on Duolingo’s Instagram.

 

Results

The series was the first-ever on YouTube Shorts pushing the limits of what’s possible on the platform. Since launch, it has amassed over 32M views and 1.7M likes, and driven over 200k followers on the Duolingo account. 

The series also spread quickly on TikTok, growing the brand new @lily account from literally zero to 314.5k followers, 4 million likes, and over 27M organic views.

It has also elicited a flood of enthusiastic calls for a streaming provider to greenlight an extended version of “the best show ever.” @KingNiallStoyles called it “such a beautiful masterpiece” And the audience is begging for season two.

 

Media

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Loop, Duolingo

Links

Entry Credits