“What we want is to change the perception that learning English is something tedious. We chose these two brands because they are very iconic and have very representative advertising in the country. And we also go with the memeros because they are content creators who know how to get on the train, “explains Ricoy.
This campaign required an investment of 80,000 dollars and the tentative goal is to reach 4.5% of engagement rate in the next 15 days. Ricoy is aware that memes in advertising are a double-edged sword. If it is done in an organic and very natural way, it can be very beneficial and leave great returns on investment for the brand, but if it is done in a forced way, it can be counterproductive.
“My successful brand dumbbell is Montalvo in the creative sphere and Eureka in the social media and public relations part. They already have a lot of experience in using the language for advertising campaigns and it has worked very well for them. Our goal is to get people talking and to spark curiosity about learning English in a fun way,” says Ricoy.
Why don’t we Mexicans master English?
In its study How well does Duolingo work?, the platform found that reaching the fifth level in the app is equivalent to four semesters of university level, in terms of learning a language. Also, university students invest an average of 240 hours to complete these four semesters, while people who practice in the app reach the fifth level by dedicating around 120 hours.
The difference, says the director, is that people learn better through games and entertainment. Duolingo is a free app, based on a model of gamification and artificial intelligence, which can be accessed in moments of waiting or leisure. Hence the importance of changing the perspective of suffering that one has about learning the language, he points out.
Today, despite the fact that Mexico is a neighbor of the United States, it is also one of the Latin countries with the least command of English. According to the World Bank and the CIA World Factbook, 92.7% of the Mexican population speaks only Spanish and, in terms of English, out of 112 non-English speaking countries, Mexico fell to 92nd place in the ranking of language proficiency, which carries out the Education First (EF) year after year.
Tannia Domenzain, director of marketing and business development at this language school abroad, says that Mexicans have an average elementary level (A2), which allows them to communicate in everyday situations with frequently used expressions, but they cannot maintain a fluid conversation or understand structurally complex texts.
The problem is in the educational system, says Diego Villegas, co-founder and CEO of Slang, a platform dedicated to teaching specialized and professional English. “The entire English curriculum has been done through the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), which tries to teach the most common words in English. Each professional requires different concepts, depending on her career and there is a big flaw because she only knows what is most common. And what is most common, like ordering breakfast, is the least useful in the professional field, ”he says.
Villegas assures that in a traditional English course the person learns 3,000 words in a year, when an American manages an average of 60,000 words. “Learning English is one of the things that a Mexican suffers the most because he needs dedication, money to invest and also in a year he learns very little, only 5%, which has been the language of a four or five year old,” he points out. .
To the gaps in the educational system, Nicolás Fuenzalida, chief commercial officer of the Poliglota language platform, adds the myths surrounding learning English: that people can no longer learn it after a certain age, that to master it they must memorize the structures grammatical and that you have to speak it first to then consume content in English, as is the case with Duolingo ads.
To really learn English, managers agree, new methodologies based on data are needed, machine learningartificial intelligence and gamification that allow the person to enjoy the tour. Also have more initiatives that promote language immersion, without the user suffering.