GEEIQ
Walmart
How Walmart built the first brand utility on Roblox with the help of GEEIQ
The challenge
90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart store, but how does that translate to the virtual world?
When Walmart was looking to enhance its Roblox presence, its team knew their new approach needed to prioritize player experiences, be authentic to the brand and deliver unique value.
They wanted to boost brand reach, engage their target market and position Walmart as a digital destination for the long term. To do this, Walmart needed to equip its team with cross-channel data that would allow them to measure and attribute their experience’s success on Roblox. That’s where GEEIQ came in.
The solution
Walmart partnered with GEEIQ to leverage the platform’s competitor analysis, player insight and UGC creator tools. GEEIQ’s team helped identify what in-game items were most popular every week. The goal was to understand the opportunity for Walmart within Roblox and put the Roblox community at the heart of Walmart’s virtual strategy.
What emerged from this was Walmart Discovered.
Walmart Discovered isn’t just a game. It’s a utility-based experience. The experience is inspired by Walmart’s real-world promise to its customers to help them “find their thing”, both in-store and online. The manifestation of this on Roblox is anchored in a utility-based activation, delivering a better discovery experience for the things that matter the most to users on the platform.
So, how does it work?
Rather than using traditional game loops, it helps players discover popular Roblox experiences and UGC items from more than 350+ content creators. Players vote for their favorite UGC items and new experiences, democratizing access to these and empowering smaller independent creators by providing them with a platform to showcase their work.
The GEEIQ platform provided Walmart with a tool and team of experts to help find top creators and gauge its audiences’ reception to different in-game updates. They could now easily access their private sales data, ROI and audience demographics.
This allowed their team to remain agile and allocate resources towards initiatives that were boosting engagement, retention and loyalty. Walmart’s Roblox strategy became more reactive and resource-effective.
The results
65% of Walmart Discovered players are over the age of 18.
Speaking at GEEIQ’s webinar, Justin Breton, Head of Innovation and Partnerships at Walmart, elaborated on why the brand decided to continue its Roblox journey:
“There was this perception that Roblox was for kids, but with Walmart Discovered, what we’ve seen is that more than 65% of people that are spending time with our brand on this platform are above the age of 18. They are at a time when they are actually making brand decisions and purchase decisions. So, we are engaging with the core customer that we intended to engage with by showing up on the Roblox platform.”
What emerged from this was Walmart Discovered.
Walmart Discovered isn’t just a game. It’s a utility-based experience. The experience is inspired by Walmart’s real-world promise to its customers to help them “find their thing”, both in-store and online. The manifestation of this on Roblox is anchored in a utility-based activation, delivering a better discovery experience for the things that matter the most to users on the platform.
Meaningful brand engagement and a 96.34% approval rating.
In just 6 months, Walmart Discovered received over 20 million visits, with average session times reaching highs of nearly nine minutes. It also has a 96.34% approval rating, one of the highest approval ratings among branded Roblox experiences.
Notably, the experience reached these milestones much faster than other brands, evidencing the power of aligning brand identity with digital communities and data.
How does GEEIQ help Walmart succeed?
GEEIQ facilitates Walmart’s success by helping the brand:
1. Assess its Roblox engagement
The GEEIQ platform provided Walmart with easy-to-digest data points such as visits, audience engagement, equip rates and item sales. GEEIQ’s team of experts provided comparative analysis around engagement with Walmart on Roblox against its other media channels.
2. Find and hire UGC creators
Using the GEEIQ platforms’ brand affinity, influencer marketing and sales performance tools, Walmart found creators and identified what UGC items the community wanted to see on Roblox. This facilitated the brand’s ability to feature the work of over 350+ UGC creators on Walmart Discovered, providing them with a platform to showcase their work.
This also made it easier for Walmart to find UGC creators to partner with and drop their own free UGC items. Now, Walmart Discovered has seen more than 1.5 million of their UGC items claimed, all tracked through the GEEIQ platform.
3. Understand and conduct the RFP Process
Early on, the GEEIQ team collaborated with Walmart to find the best development studio for the brand to work with. After two rounds of RFP, Sawhorse Productions emerged as the best developer for Walmart’s goals out of the five initial studios chosen. Sawhorse Productions is an award-winning creative development studio which has created Roblox experiences for brands like Fenty Beauty, Nickelodeon and Paris Hilton.
4. Build a paid media strategy on Roblox
GEEIQ’s team helped Walmart navigate the different forms of paid media available on Roblox. As with Meta or TikTok, Roblox has multiple ad types, including static and video ads. However, there are also newer ad formats, like sponsored experience tiles or portal ads. GEEIQ advised Walmart on how to leverage Roblox’s bidding system to ensure they invested in cost-effective ad formats that would drive more qualified traffic to Walmart Discovered. Following the implementation of their ad strategy, GEEIQ also continually helps measure and attribute the success of different Walmart ad campaigns on Roblox.
Insight: Walmart utilizes Roblox for bottom-of-funnel conversion
With more and more brands activating in virtual worlds, there’s an increased demand for gaming intelligence that enables marketers to accurately gauge in-game interest and engagement.