Walmart Global

The objective

Boosting awareness around its brand story while prompting community engagement

Walmart has nearly become synonymous with its Every Day Low Price (EDLP) value proposition that allows customers to save money and live better. However, in these times of economic downturn, they aimed to humanize their brand and showcase their value beyond low prices by inviting loyal Walmart shoppers to share their insider tips, tricks, and POVs.

Understanding the power of TikTok's prominent shopping community, Walmart and Day One Agency turned to TikTok to launch a comprehensive and native campaign. The campaign entitled #IYWYK (If You Walmart, You Know), playing on a broader TikTok #IYKYK (If you know, you know) trend, was designed to engage, entertain, and educate TikTok users and establish more brand equity.

The solution

Leveraging co-creation solutions to drive community commerce

Walmart employed TikTok's innovative ad formats to launch its #IYWYK campaign. Co-creation solutions, including TopView and Branded Mission, allowed Walmart to tap into community commerce and inspire TikTok creators to show how they "Walmart," by sharing the tips, tricks and hacks only Walmart shoppers would know. By partnering with TikTok creators, Walmart communicated the value of shopping at their store in an authentic, engaging way.

Walmart debuted the campaign with a TopView Ad to ensure visibility. The ad's premium placement at the top of the For You Page spread awareness and maximized reach for the campaign. Beginning the video with the campaign catchphrase, "If You Walmart You Know,” lifestyle creator @prestonconrad took viewers through his experience shopping for luxury home decor at Walmart, spotlighting a series of high-end, yet affordable finds. To conclude the video, Preston kicked off Walmart's Branded Mission Hashtag Challenge, inspiring creators across the platform to participate.

TikTok launched Branded Mission in late 2022. Branded Mission is an industry-first ad solution that enables advertisers to sponsor original content from TikTok creators. Here's how it works: brands set up their Mission with a brief that details how to participate. Once the Mission is live, TikTok creators are notified and can participate in the Missions of their choice. Brands select their favorite original videos to amplify on TikTok through promoted ad traffic.

Walmart's Branded Mission Hashtag Challenge allowed the company to crowdsource creative, on-brand content from TikTok's community of creators. To participate in the Branded Mission, creators used the hashtag #IYWYK to share how Walmart provides a better life within reach. Walmart selected their favorite original submissions to boost as sponsored ads and further establish their company as the go-to destination for high-quality, low-price shopping. The top boosted videos featured entertaining content from @officialcooder, @blackstar3339, and @kayjaypayyy, who communicated the value of shopping at Walmart and inspired others to share appreciation for the brand.

The results

Driving big box wins on small screens

Walmart’s community-driven campaign integrated a powerhouse of TikTok ad solutions, including our high-funnel TopView and Branded Mission, providing one of the biggest mobile entertainment stages for the big box retailer. They effectively utilized creator partnerships to usher in their Branded Mission event, authentically setting the tone for community participation. The campaign inspired the creation of over 700 engaging creator-produced videos, earning them a rousing 20% engagement rate, two times greater than TikTok benchmarks.

By leveraging TopView to drive the launch and boost creators’ awareness of the Branded Mission and overall campaign, Walmart quickly captured users' attention with 30 million impressions and 2 million clicks to the Hashtag Challenge page. Beyond merely grabbing people's attention, #IYWYK stayed top of mind for users, largely outperforming TikTok ad recall norms by 6% with an awareness lift of 9.2%, thus proving the staying power of TikTok community commerce.

Reeling from the success of this campaign, the global retailer has continued to run Branded Missions using this multi-pronged approach in their efforts for the holiday season, and their annual event.