Walmart: Bringing joy to holiday shopping

How We Did It

Gamified content

“Play for Joy” game enabled users to collect virtual Walmart gifts in an augmented reality (AR) experience.

Innovative experiences

Shoppable videos and AR made holiday shopping more engaging.

Influencer collaboration

Influencers shared their home and holiday picks in an AR-enabled video.

We are focused on meeting new and existing customers in their moments of discovery and inspiration, and providing them with easy buying options that enable them to instantly take action.

Sarah Henry, Head of Content, Influencer and Social Commerce at Walmart

Background

Putting the ‘fun’ in full-funnel

At best, gift-giving is one of the most rewarding ways to show your family and friends you love them. At its worst, it’s a never-ending nightmare of lists to check off and obligations to fulfill. That’s why Walmart and Yahoo partnered for the third year in a row to give shoppers better deals, content and exciting new interactive shopping experiences.

Solutions

It’s all fun and games

Walmart’s 2021 holiday campaign, “Holiday with Heart,” sought to make holiday shopping a little more joyful. This meant taking full advantage of the Yahoo ecosystem, featuring custom gift guides, affiliate content, editorial sponsorships and display media. The emphasis on fun manifested in “Play for Joy,” a game where users tried to collect as many virtual Walmart gifts as possible in this AR version of the iconic claw machine arcade game.

Results

Joy to the world for joyful growth

The winning combination of a proven partnership and a revolutionary media strategy came with some serious success. Walmart tied ad creative and content together to deliver an innovative shopping experience with built-in convenience. And people took notice — 463M total impressions and a reach of over 24.3M unique users, to be exact.

Source: Yahoo internal data, 2021.

Walmart is always looking for next-generation experiences that are engaging and intuitive, so that’s why we partnered with Yahoo to create the AR Play for Joy game to empower every family to unleash a season of collective joy.

Sarah Henry, Head of Content, Influencer and Social Commerce at Walmart