Walmart Brings a Little ‘RomCommerce’ to its Holiday Marketing
Walmart is tapping into one of Americans’ favorite holiday traditions — watching holiday rom-coms — for a new 23-part, serial ad campaign called Add to Heart that will be fully shoppable.
Complete with romantic rendezvous in the Garden Center and dancing among the holiday décor, the shoppable commercial series will give rom-com fans all the spice and sweet intrigue they love, with a little shopping thrown into the mix. New York designer Jessica loses her luggage while returning to her hometown for the holidays. When she visits her local Walmart to restock, she bumps into her old flame Javi, and between the town festivities, decorating and shopping, they rekindle their spark. But there’s a catch, she has a boyfriend back in New York who has proposed and won’t let Jessica go without a fight.
From furniture and holiday décor to the fashion of the entire series cast, almost everything in Add to Heart was sourced from Walmart, giving customers the opportunity to shop more than 330 products throughout the series.
The first few episodes of the series will be released on TikTok (marking that platform’s first-ever fully shoppable holiday series), Roku and YouTube starting Dec. 2, with the remainder dropping Dec. 5 and Dec. 8. Customers also will be able to watch the series on Walmart’s social channels. Through integrations with TikTok’s Video Shopping Ads feature and Roku’s “Ok to Text” feature, customers will be able to shop from wherever they are watching. Roku users can access the series through Walmart’s first shoppable branded entertainment playlist and a marquee ad on the Roku home screen, in a continuation of the two companies’ ongoing shoppable TV partnership.
“We know gifting and curling up to watch a favorite Christmas movie are part of so many families’ traditions, so what better time to launch an innovative, first-of-its-kind shoppable series?” said William White, Chief Marketing Officer of Walmart U.S. in a statement. “Add to Heart is a fun, unique way for our customers to be entertained while shopping for the great deals on top brands that they expect from Walmart.”
Add to Heart is just the latest push by Walmart into the realm of shoppable content, which has also included other pilots with NBCUniversal, TikTok, livestreaming platform TalkShopLive and more. The growing prominence of retail media alongside more sophisticated commerce integrations into non-endemic platforms like social media and streaming TV, are driving a rapid expansion of shoppable content experiences. And Walmart isn’t alone in pursuing these opportunities, with NBCUniversal and Amazon, among others, also pushing the envelope to help customers shop outside of stores, wherever they are inspired.
Check out the full Add to Heart trailer here.
