Walmart’s Holiday ‘RomCommerce’ Aims to Make Shoppers Swoon 

This holiday season, Walmart is taking a page from The Hallmark Channel—sort of. 

While the cable network remains the undisputed champion of the holiday film genre, the mega-retailer is throwing its own hat into the romcom ring. Its new 23-episode series, Add to Heart, aims to connect with shoppers who watch the sweet guilty pleasures alongside holiday traditions such as decorating, shopping and baking cookies. 

With its name and opening title graphics giving a subtle wink to the online shopping experience, Add to Heart follows a young woman named Jessica working as an interior design assistant in New York as she navigates the usual romcom tropes. Those include an unexpected proposal from a man she’s dated briefly, a glamorous yet icy boss, a gay roommate-slash-bestie who provides the comedic one-liners and revelatory truth bombs, and a chance encounter with a former flame named Javi—who may or may not be the love of her life—when she returns to her small hometown for the holidays.  

In the Walmart version, audiences can shop the outfits worn by the cast, the makeup the boss applies, and almost all the furnishings, ornaments and other holiday fare conspicuously placed around the generously spaced homes—with more than 330 products available to purchase through the retailer. 

That the former couple’s “re-meet cute” and courtship happens while she is shopping in her local Walmart store is also by design. 

Each episode of Add to Heart runs under three minutes, and the conclusions prompt audiences to visit a dedicated homepage on the retailer’s site to shop items featured in the series.

Produced in partnership with Publicis Groupe agencies including Fallon, Publicis NY, The Community, Contender and Digitas, the series launches on TikTok, Roku and YouTube with the first six episodes Dec. 2, the next eight episodes Dec. 5 and the remaining nine Dec. 8.  

The ‘RomCommerce’ era is here 

William White, chief marketing officer at Walmart U.S., told Adweek the series continues a strategy the retailer has implemented “for quite some time,” using innovation to create omnichannel experiences that “shorten the distance between inspiration and purchase.”

The brand has previously created content series featuring Kansas City Chiefs quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, Latin music star Becky G and Barbie. It also recently announced a partnership with NBCUniversal to run shoppable episodes of Bravo’s Below Deck on Peacock using KERV Interactive’s artificial intelligence technology, which identifies items in the scenes or and locates them through the retailer.

But with Add to Heart, White said Walmart is taking these experiences to the next level. 

“We are really excited that we are bringing two favorite holiday traditions together with shopping and watching holiday rom-coms,” said White, a 2023 Adweek Brand Genius.

White said the concept for the series was rooted in insights including that 60% of Americans are looking to make a purchase through social media—a trend he said continues to rise and has spurred the brand’s investment in TikTok. 

The episodes use TikTok’s shoppable video ads and Roku’s “OK to text” feature, both of which allow viewers to shop while watching the love story unfold.

The retailer will also host a “Blue Carpet Premiere” event in New York Nov. 30, with many of the invited guests being real-life couples—including some of the store’s own associates—who met in the aisles of Walmart. 

On a ‘Mean (Girls)’ streak 

Walmart has been on a hot streak lately with its shoppable content, having recently released the megahit “On Wednesdays, We Shop Black Friday Deals” campaign, which reunited several cast members from early aughts classic Mean Girls. In the ad, the movie’s stars—including Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert, Daniel Franzese and Rajiv Surendra—reprised their roles as adults, with a surprise appearance by Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot as a schoolteacher.  

The premise of the viral campaign centered around the retailer announcing new items that would be part of its Black Friday deals on Wednesdays—a day with great significance in the film. The modernized story integrated products such as clothing and toys, with shots of the cast using the store’s app to access more deals. 

“That was a lot of fun,” said White, who told Adweek the idea behind using the film was to differentiate the brand “with all the different noise in the marketplace.” 

“For us, it started with locking in on [the decision that], ‘Our deals are gonna be on Wednesdays,’” he added. “Once that was the day, then we started ideating on, ‘What can we do that just feels iconic around Wednesday?’ and just the idea of such a great classic line and moment in a movie such as. ‘On Wednesdays we wear pink.’”

White continued, “We just ran with that idea and [said], ‘On Wednesdays we shop deals,’ and the whole thing came to life. And we’ve been thrilled with how much engagement, social chatter and conversation we’ve had with Mean Girls.”