Walmart expands digital marketing efforts on TikTok, Roblox – Chain Store Age

Walmart Discovered is offering an AR extension.

Walmart Inc. is promoting romance novels on TikTok and enhancing its Roblox offering with augmented reality.

The discount giant, which announced in September 2023 that it would deepen its commercial activity in “virtual worlds,” is joining a rapidly growing community of book-lovers on TikTok and adding an omnichannel AR extension to its “Walmart Discovered” Roblox experience. 

Following are brief overviews of each new Walmart digital marketing initiative:

TikTok

Walmart, which has been partnering with TikTok since 2020, is launching a campaign it calls “Spicy Summer” on BookTok, a community on TikTok with more than 250 billion views from a group of readers discussing their favorite books.

The community, which is focused on the romance and fantasy genres, has developed a “spice scale” to rate the spiciness of their favorite reads. Marketing to the BookTok community, Walmart has created a limited-edition Spicy Books Hot Sauce set. 

Packaged to look like a book, this proprietary collection features five Melinda’s hot sauces, each corresponding to a level on the spice scale, from mild to burning. In addition to Spicy Books Hot Sauce, Walmart’s dedicated Spicy Summer landing page will also allow customers to shop summer books, fashions and accessories, with collections inspired by popular Spicy Books selections.

“Customers are at the center of everything we do at Walmart, and we look to places where they are spending their time to create genuine moments of connections with them,” said Courtney Killingsworth, director of brand marketing, Walmart. “This campaign is the perfect way to reach and celebrate BookTokers and the community they thrive in. We’re giving a wink to BookTok fandom with our Spicy Books Hot Sauce, and then expanding to a larger customer base by bringing some spice to all summer must-haves.”