Walmart enters the metaverse wave with the youngest audience in its sights
Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2025 7:23 am
Introducing Walmart Land on Roblox
Walmart Land delivers beauty, fashion and style content directly to the global Roblox community of over 52 million daily users, debuting with three major experiences: Electric Island, House of Style and Electric Fest.
Electric Island is inspired by the world's biggest music festivals, boost your business with our doctor database where users can take part in dance challenges and venture into a DJ booth. It also features a Netflix trivia experience with Noah Schnapp from "Stranger Things."
Meanwhile, House of Style, which features a virtual dressing room and cosmetics bar, allows users to participate in motion capture shows with artists such as Madison Beer, Kane Brown and YUNGBLUD.
Additionally, Walmart's Universe of Play will offer a virtual toy trail on Roblox, bringing the best of Walmart to life in a virtual world, including:
Immersive games that offer experiences with famous gaming products and characters.
Desired Rewards, where users will be able to collect rewards based on their online performance.
Virtual adventures, where users can travel through the Walmart universe faster with their avatars.
"We're going big: creating community, content, entertainment and games through the launch of Walmart Land and Walmart Universe of Play, because we know our customers spend a lot of time there. So we're focusing on creating new and innovative experiences that excite them, something we're already doing in the communities where they live and now in the virtual worlds where they play," said William White, Chief Marketing Officer of Walmart US in a recent news item about the company's new venture.
Other companies are also focusing on the metaverse to gain prominence
Walmart has taken a major step towards turning the metaverse into an increasingly popular commerce channel. A study published by Accenture shows that consumer interest in shopping in the metaverse may be greater than previously thought.
According to Jill Standish, managing director and global head of retail at Accenture Group, "The era of the metaverse has already begun and for consumer-facing companies, it's not a question of whether to enter the metaverse, but rather how to do so."
As a result, brands will have to reimagine and test what these new interactive experiences can mean for consumers. As is the case with other famous brands that have already launched their experiences or virtual storefronts on Roblox, such as Chipotle , American Eagle , Dick's Sporting Goods , and Pacsun .
Other famous brands and artists have also taken the lead and have already launched their experiences or virtual showcases in the Metaverse, as is the case of Boca Rosa Company and Anitta.
Metaverse: Is it worth it?
Despite these global initiatives, the Metaverse is still a somewhat distant reality for the majority of the population. There may be some early adopters, especially tech lovers and generation Z , but there is still a long way to go until general acceptance.
We have seen, for example, how the owner of Meta (the group formerly known as Facebook), Mark Zuckerberg, has lost more than half of his personal wealth this month , partly because the company is investing heavily in the metaverse, even though people still don't fully believe it.
Google's former CEO recently said that we still don't know what the metaverse is, and search results prove it: 60% of respondents in an Axios study are unfamiliar with the idea of the metaverse.
But we can't ignore one trend: whether in the metaverse or not, consumers (especially young ones) are looking for more interaction, interactivity and gamification.
It's no coincidence that brands like Netflix and Spotify are investing in gaming. Nor is it a coincidence that Apple is launching its iPhone 14 on an interactive landing page or that several brands are testing strategies on Twitch .
And, of course, with this initiative, Walmart opens the door to thousands of other brands that are still afraid to enter this new universe.
As marketers, we should always be open to trying new mediums and take a test-and-learn approach to these new experiments.
I think that introducing interaction and gamification when defining your strategies (in the metaverse or whatever you want to test) can be a good bet to attract a new audience in a relevant and interactive way.
Do you want to stay up to date with the best Marketing practices? I suggest you subscribe to The Beat , Rock Content's interactive newsletter. There you will find all the trends that matter in the digital Marketing landscape. See you there!
Walmart Land delivers beauty, fashion and style content directly to the global Roblox community of over 52 million daily users, debuting with three major experiences: Electric Island, House of Style and Electric Fest.
Electric Island is inspired by the world's biggest music festivals, boost your business with our doctor database where users can take part in dance challenges and venture into a DJ booth. It also features a Netflix trivia experience with Noah Schnapp from "Stranger Things."
Meanwhile, House of Style, which features a virtual dressing room and cosmetics bar, allows users to participate in motion capture shows with artists such as Madison Beer, Kane Brown and YUNGBLUD.
Additionally, Walmart's Universe of Play will offer a virtual toy trail on Roblox, bringing the best of Walmart to life in a virtual world, including:
Immersive games that offer experiences with famous gaming products and characters.
Desired Rewards, where users will be able to collect rewards based on their online performance.
Virtual adventures, where users can travel through the Walmart universe faster with their avatars.
"We're going big: creating community, content, entertainment and games through the launch of Walmart Land and Walmart Universe of Play, because we know our customers spend a lot of time there. So we're focusing on creating new and innovative experiences that excite them, something we're already doing in the communities where they live and now in the virtual worlds where they play," said William White, Chief Marketing Officer of Walmart US in a recent news item about the company's new venture.
Other companies are also focusing on the metaverse to gain prominence
Walmart has taken a major step towards turning the metaverse into an increasingly popular commerce channel. A study published by Accenture shows that consumer interest in shopping in the metaverse may be greater than previously thought.
According to Jill Standish, managing director and global head of retail at Accenture Group, "The era of the metaverse has already begun and for consumer-facing companies, it's not a question of whether to enter the metaverse, but rather how to do so."
As a result, brands will have to reimagine and test what these new interactive experiences can mean for consumers. As is the case with other famous brands that have already launched their experiences or virtual storefronts on Roblox, such as Chipotle , American Eagle , Dick's Sporting Goods , and Pacsun .
Other famous brands and artists have also taken the lead and have already launched their experiences or virtual showcases in the Metaverse, as is the case of Boca Rosa Company and Anitta.
Metaverse: Is it worth it?
Despite these global initiatives, the Metaverse is still a somewhat distant reality for the majority of the population. There may be some early adopters, especially tech lovers and generation Z , but there is still a long way to go until general acceptance.
We have seen, for example, how the owner of Meta (the group formerly known as Facebook), Mark Zuckerberg, has lost more than half of his personal wealth this month , partly because the company is investing heavily in the metaverse, even though people still don't fully believe it.
Google's former CEO recently said that we still don't know what the metaverse is, and search results prove it: 60% of respondents in an Axios study are unfamiliar with the idea of the metaverse.
But we can't ignore one trend: whether in the metaverse or not, consumers (especially young ones) are looking for more interaction, interactivity and gamification.
It's no coincidence that brands like Netflix and Spotify are investing in gaming. Nor is it a coincidence that Apple is launching its iPhone 14 on an interactive landing page or that several brands are testing strategies on Twitch .
And, of course, with this initiative, Walmart opens the door to thousands of other brands that are still afraid to enter this new universe.
As marketers, we should always be open to trying new mediums and take a test-and-learn approach to these new experiments.
I think that introducing interaction and gamification when defining your strategies (in the metaverse or whatever you want to test) can be a good bet to attract a new audience in a relevant and interactive way.
Do you want to stay up to date with the best Marketing practices? I suggest you subscribe to The Beat , Rock Content's interactive newsletter. There you will find all the trends that matter in the digital Marketing landscape. See you there!