Rewind: Don't Say Metaverse

[00:01:26] Alicia: Remember when it seemed like you couldn't read an article or research report without seeing the word metaverse in it? Me too. Luckily, we're talking about immersive commerce experiences with a bit more clarity and specificity. And that is largely due to the hard work and innovative thinking of executives like Justin Breton of Walmart. In fact, just last week, we got to hear Justin speak with Gianna Valentina of Spatial at VSIONS Summit in New York City. They spoke about Walmart Unlimited, the retailer's latest venture into gaming: A three part immersive storytelling experience that authentically brings Walmart brand partners and products into community powered worlds. Walmart has certainly come a long way in its adaptive commerce vision. So we thought it was only appropriate to go back to the early days when Justin was first telling us about why such an established brick and mortar brand like Walmart was focusing less on conversions and more on reimagining how the brand shows up in consumers' digital lives. This week, we're going back nine months to Justin's conversation with Phillip and Brian. A moment of foreshadowing masked as an in the moment joke. And it ended up being a very thought provoking discussion on why Justin and his team do not say the word metaverse.

[00:03:06] Brian: Hello, and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast about the intersection of culture and commerce. I am Brian.

[00:03:13] Phillip: I'm Phillip. And today's kind of a landmark day of Future Commerce because, you know, we're talking about the future of commerce, future of web commerce. And I don't think anyone is building as intently or with such fervor as Walmart. And today joining us is the person who I think is making the rounds in the media around the investments that Walmart is making there. It's Justin Breton, the Head of Brand Marketing and Innovation at Walmart. Tell us a little bit, Justin, about Walmart Realms and welcome to the show.

[00:03:41] Justin : Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here, and and thank you for all of the the coverage that you've given us to date and your enthusiasm for the work that the team is doing around Walmart Realm. Before I talk about Walmart Realm, I'll give you a little context into sort of how we think about emerging platforms and new technologies and sort of the work that the team does. We like to sort of position ourselves as a team that is at the intersection of culture and commerce.

[00:04:09] Brian: Sweet.

[00:04:10] Justin : And looking for opportunities that allow us to engage with customers outside the traditional four walls of Walmart. And by traditional four walls of Walmart, I don't mean just the store. I mean beyond the website, beyond the app, meeting customers where they are online and providing them with experiences or opportunities that shorten the distance between inspiration and commerce. And so as you think about things like Walmart Discovered on Roblox, Walmart Realm, the CultureVerse on Spatial, those are fantastical, immersive, virtual environments that push the boundaries of what's possible in the real world and provide consumers with experiences that are unexpected, that provide surprise and delight, and in some instances, have commerce. And so with Walmart Realm, we've really pushed the boundaries on what's possible in the real world by creating these immersive virtual storefronts. Our latest update, which launched a couple weeks ago, focuses on back to college. So it's five dorms that again push the boundaries of what's possible in the real world. They're merchandised with real world product, all of which is displayed virtually. You can shop those products. They're curated by creators. And so they're being chosen by the faces and names that the next generation of consumers are looking to for inspiration to shop. And so it's been fun to test into these new mediums. I think we're just scratching the surface of what's possible. But, yeah, we've done a lot. We've learned a lot, and there's a lot more to come.

[00:05:41] Phillip: Well, congrats so far. I think the the the bigger challenge that anybody has in making a decision like this to sort of stretch and innovate into a new area on the web is, you know, there's a really well trodden path of how to transact online. And when you buy something online, you don't have to retrain a customer how to shop there. I have to believe that you are having to recreate what a best practice looks like in a more immersive space. What are some of those ways that you're rethinking the way Walmart brings a shopping experience to the web?

[00:06:20] Justin : Yeah. With Walmart Realm, it first and foremost is about discovery. So you're stepping into these immersive 360 degree environments where you truly can look behind you, look up, look down, navigate to these products, which again are real world products that are just being displayed virtually. In some instances, they're being displayed in a way that a particular type of product has never been displayed like before. For example, in our most recent update again, when Walmart Realm, which focused on back to college, one of the themes of a dorm room is royal. It combines sort of like this regal preppy aesthetic. And it includes a doorway that opens up into a garden. And in that garden, you have four beauty products that are larger than life, oversized. And in this particular instance, you are discovering as a customer that Walmart sells Marc Jacobs perfume. You probably might not have known that. You might've thought that Walmart was where I go for X, Y, and Z, but didn't have any awareness of the fact that Walmart is a retailer of premium beauty products. We sell premium beauty brands, including Marc Jacobs fragrance. And so it's first and foremost about discovery and really shortening that distance between inspiration or discovery and commerce. And so when you come into Walmart Realm, you navigate these rooms, these experiences, you add these products to your cart. The actual add to cart flow is very familiar. So you're seeing a, we call it a PDP or a product detail page. A product detail page being displayed for that particular medium. So in this instance, Walmart Realm, where you see the real world images of the product similar to what you would see on walmart.com. So it starts to feel familiar despite you being in a destination that's more fantastical and inspirational. You can choose if there happens to be variants, a particular color or a size. There's an add to cart button. You build that cart natively. And then within Walmart Realm, at least in the infancy of what we've introduced, when you click checkout, it actually loads a tab on walmart.com where your items are pre populated. So we're actually bringing you into an environment that is familiar to you, that you trust, that if you're a Walmart Plus member, you reap the benefits of that. And so while the discovery and cart building experience lives within Walmart Realm, we're actually making the checkout process easy and familiar and safe. And so in that particular instance, while the discovery experience is different, the checkout flow feels familiar, which I think is important. But it's also giving us the learnings of, well, how do we actually make the checkout flow be a part of Walmart Realm in the future? As we think about the evolution of Walmart Realm, how do we think through a more seamless add to cart experience or a more seamless checkout experience where you're not actually leaving the destination? It's happening there. And so, again, I think we're scratching the surface on what's possible on all of these platforms and technologies, but also within Walmart Realm.

[00:09:22] Brian: Interesting. Yeah. I think you're dead on about the safety and trust and the ease of checkout, like it's something that's familiar within the context of Discovery experience. I'm curious. So the Discovery experience feels very groundbreaking. It also I'm curious why now, because the idea of browsing around in a world has actually been available for a long, long time in the context of a digital experience. So you might be too young for this, Justin, but I don't know if you remember the game Myst. It kind of took over the... Okay. You are too young. It took the video game world by storm.

[00:10:08] Phillip: Show your age, Brian.

[00:10:09] Brian: I know. Back when video games just started to really, like, take a hold and the idea of like a 3D browsing world, it was followed by another game called Riven. And it was like this whole world where you explored and like did puzzles and mini games and it's actually kinda really similar to Walmart Realm in many ways. People have been going into digital worlds and browsing and playing games for for a long long time. What makes this moment different for it to start to make sense for shopping?

[00:10:45] Justin : That's a really, really great question. And I'm not familiar with those games. So I guess I am young.

[00:10:54] Brian: {laughter} We're old.

[00:10:55] Phillip: We are old then. Yeah.

[00:10:56] Justin : I'm not familiar with them, but I will certainly have to check them out after we finished recording today to familiarize myself with them. I think it's interesting, like when we were connecting prior to us hitting record today, we were talking about like, what words are we not gonna say? And we kind of were joking around, we don't say metaverse. And it's really interesting because we don't say metaverse at Walmart. We don't use that as a term to describe the work that we're doing. However, the infancy of the work that we're doing started when the metaverse was a darling of the headlines. It was something that people were like, "What is the metaverse? The metaverse is this. This brand is doing this in the metaverse." And it became very clear, at least to me, that there was never any true definition of the metaverse. It included AI. It included AR. It included NFTs. It included Web3. It included immersive experiences.

[00:11:55] Phillip: Totally.

[00:11:55] Justin : It was a catch all for all of these different types of technologies and experiences, which add value to brand and retailer efforts on their own. And so Walmart Realm is an immersive commerce experience. Walmart Discovered on Roblox is a brand destination on a virtual social platform. The work that we did on the CultureVerse, similar to what we did on Roblox, but of course with a different community in mind, a different creative approach. And so I think like the time for us was like, it's happening now because there's awareness of this movement. And again, we maybe leaned into what we were seeing in the headlines to really help inform our strategy and our approach and the why. The why being like, why now? But soon after that, we quickly moved away from even using that term and really leaned into the notion of like, we are creating immersive experiences where when we show up, we are adding value and we are creating ritualistic behavior with the communities that we are looking to engage with. The same way that we have ritualistic behavior with our customers in the real world. Customers go to walmart.com every other week to look at new apparel or buy beauty items or restock on paper towels. Or they go to their local Walmart to buy their groceries, get stuff for a barbecue, prepare for a tailgate. We are a part of our customers lives in the real world. How do we become a part of their lives in the virtual and digital ecosystem. And so I think the now, the why now is technology has advanced. I think adoption of these technologies is on the rise, still early. But for us, it's important to show up early to test, learn and optimize for the future where like the adoption rates of this aren't even in discussion because it's the norm. People are going into immersive commerce experiences. They are shopping on Roblox, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And so I think we like rode the wave of the metaverse, but quickly tested, learned, and optimized into our own strategy, which is effectively what you see in market today.

[00:14:05] Brian: It also feels like this is the first wave, this Gen Alpha wave that's coming up. It's it's the Chromebook generation. Right? They were born into a world, like the first Gen of Chromebooks, and it seems like every person in the world or in the American market, I should say, now has a Chromebook in their home or some sort of down market laptop for school or whatever. And even in a rural context, it feels like the Internet opens up a world of possibilities. Nerd culture is becoming the culture, as we've said a few times before. And so the metaverse is actually an outflow of that transformation of culture that's due to new disruptive technology working its way up through a new generation, that's a very, like, I guess...

[00:14:59] Phillip: I would even, I'd put a bow on that by saying to get to an evolved shopping platform for when a new sort of gaming centric, gaming native generation is ready to shop, you have to start laying the groundwork for it now. And I love the focus. I think a large portion of the discourse around Walmart Realm's launch was who's this for? It was said very explicitly. This is for a specific kind of a shopper, maybe that kind of a person who's going to college or is returning to college. Talk a little bit about the creator tie in and how that, I assume that that's a new means of awareness and acquisition. It's a new kind of a front door, probably expands your reach a little bit. Tell us how you landed up on that as a key part of the strategy.

[00:16:00] Justin : Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's like all the things that you said. It's a way for Walmart Realm to be introduced to the next generation of shoppers from somebody that they look to for inspiration. And I think that there's probably, what I'm about to say is probably like sensational and I'm probably gonna get in trouble for saying this. But I would imagine that there's some fatigue around influencer promoted products. However, there is so much newness and opportunity around influencer promoted experiences. And so when they can create an experience that feels like an extension to their social persona and is immersive and is also commerce enabled and features all of the products that they like and is displayed to the fan or the follower in an unexpected way. That is new and that is different. And I think that that is a really big opportunity for us as we think about immersive commerce. And we reflect back because of course we did our due diligence to understand who else is activated in the immersive commerce space. Who's built experiences with leading platform technology partners around immersive commerce to understand like, all right, well if they all went left, how do we go right? And one of the things that we identified was this notion of like, well people know that Walmart has all of these things. How do we allow them to know that Walmart has their thing? And sometimes it's a matter of that person that you trust and are looking to for inspiration, helping you find your thing at a brand like Walmart or at a retailer like Walmart. And so the creators play a really big part in helping design the spaces and curate the spaces. Because again, it's meant to be an extension to their social persona. And as we talk about the next generation of consumers, growing up with technology, being gamers, being on social, the intersection of gaming and social and virtual platforms like a Zepeto, like a Roblox, like a Minecraft, creating something that feels again like familiar to them. I know I keep saying the word familiar. But that is so important because I think it's gonna actually translate to something that they want to go back to to shop or to discover or to play, whatever it may be.

[00:18:26] Brian: Yeah. And familiar and native, I think are keywords. Actually, who is your core demographic then? What does that profile look like?

[00:18:36] Justin : Yeah. Quite frankly, it is the next generation of consumers. So it's a younger demographic. You know, it's certainly not Gen Alpha because they are far too young to be experiencing something like a Walmart Realm or even a Walmart Discovered on Roblox. Walmart Discovered on Roblox is 13 plus. That's often lost on people. I think people hear Roblox and they're like "kids." Well, interestingly enough, Walmart Discovered's audience, 69% of it is above the age of 18. So that is the core demographic to be coming into an experience, which in April of this year, we launched the first ever real world commerce offering on the platform. And so to be able to not only engage with them on a platform that we know they're spending time, that we know they're spending virtual currency buying virtual items, we've now introduced the opportunity for them to buy real world items on a platform where they are. We're meeting them where they are online. And so as it relates to all of our immersive commerce efforts, it's very much about that next generation and creating something that feels, I'm just gonna keep saying familiar because it feels like it's the word of the day. Familiar to them, engages them in a way that that makes sense and, you know, hopefully over time becomes something that is ritualistic in terms of how they engage with Walmart.

[00:19:54] Phillip: There is a really key part of this to... We have this opportunity for new types of goal setting in the shopping and ecommerce realm. A lot of time spent online spent engaging in product buying decisions as a past time. Your'e not necessarily buying, but you're always shopping. We see this done very well on platforms like Instagram and TikTok Shop. Livestream seems to be a place where they have the feeling of shopping, but they're not shopping on a marketplace online, which is trying to drive them through the funnel. So what are the kinds... Without, you know, me just stipulating too much? Are there different types of metrics that prove to be successful for you beyond the conversion to turning people into shoppers? Is there a set of North Star data points that say that you're achieving the goal that you set out to set here with Walmart Realm?

[00:21:30] Justin : Yeah. I think the North Star and the biggest goal for us sitting on the brand marketing team is leveraging these new technologies and emerging platforms to help shift people's perception of Walmart. And when we do qualitative feedback sessions with customers, getting feedback, and of course it's in a video format. So it's like real feedback from real customers. And it's always the good, the bad, the ugly, because everyone has an opinion about things. But when you listen to the good from the core demographic that we've identified, and they're like, "I had no idea that Walmart sold apparel." That might, to the three of us, be like, "Really?" But there are a lot of people that only think of Walmart as like a grocery destination because that's what they use Walmart for, or that's what their parents used Walmart for. And so to be able to hear this feedback from customers who are coming into Walmart Realm and are being like, "Oh my gosh, I had no idea that Walmart sold apparel. I saw the cutest fluorescent jumpsuit in the underwater space." That is such a win. That is such a win. And now it's okay, this is working with the core demographic. How do we scale that? How do we reach the masses and invite them into this environment and get that demographic in mass to have the same type of feeling? Or that same moment of discovery. Or that same moment of delight where they've uncovered a product or a category that they had no idea Walmart sold. And they might not buy it from Walmart Realm or within Walmart Realm. But now they know when they're looking to buy a jumpsuit, that Walmart is a retailer that they might be able to find a really high quality yet affordable jumpsuit for whatever occasion it is. And so leveraging, again, this new technology and these emerging platforms to engage with that next generation and position us as a retailer that doesn't just have everything but has your thing, is setting us up for the success in the future. And I think that is like our North Star. Today, there was a segment on CNBC with a gentleman that was talking about just sort of like the retail landscape. And he talked about Walmart Realm and how it's a differentiator and how it's connecting with the next generation of customers. And that's the type of coverage that I'm like, we could not have asked for a better type of spot. But it's like people get it. And I think that next generation really gets it because it feels familiar. And so I hope that like we continue to like ride the wave and more and more people embrace the newness of what we've introduced.

[00:24:31] Phillip: I think having an update within a short order within a few months time of the initial launch really sets the tone for the seriousness of this. I think a lot of these types of activations are dismissed as sort of a PR play or an agency run amok. I've heard a lot of discourse around this kind of thing. Doing more than one press tour around a rev is something I think shows some seriousness. Under your org, what are these investments? I've heard you mentioned a few. Are you specifically over Walmart Realm and all of these other activations? Or where are you focused and your team focused?

[00:25:15] Justin : Yeah. And before I answer that, I will tease, there's another update in Walmart Realm forthcoming. So when we approach these new technologies and emerging platforms, it is never with the intent of a one and done. Because if that is the case, any learnings you get, there's nothing to apply them to. So everything that we do has a learning agenda. And so I very much challenge the team to obviously think about the now. So like what is it that we're going out to market with? With Walmart Realm, we had three beautiful experiences that were driven by social trends informed by Pinterest predicts and TikTok. And so we had an underwater environment called So Jelly. We had The Alternative, which combined country western with like goth architecture. And then we had GoChromatic, which was like this metallic silver environment. When you went into either of those three, you were then given the opportunity to go into fashion, beauty, or home. So three categories, each were integrated into these three respective social trends. When you go into our Back to College update, you will see an optimization where we don't actually differentiate fashion, beauty from home. We bring you into one space where all three products. And that stems from learnings. That stems from customer feedback. And so when we think about these types of new technologies and emerging platforms, it's very much a focus on like the now and what is it that we want to test and learn to inform the back to college update, the holiday update. So that there's constant evolution so that in a future state where we talked about adoption rates earlier, this is a part of people's ritualistic behavior with Walmart or the cadence in which we're introducing stores increases, meaning people come into these experiences more regularly. How do we make sure that when we get to that point, it is optimized to drive maximum time spent, maximum discovery, maximum conversions, because that's where we actually can tell the most impactful story for the brand and the business. But the team focuses on all digital and emerging experiences from a brand marketing standpoint. So digital experiences is made up of shoppable live streams. We have a platform partner called Talk Shop Live that has enabled us to partner with a broad assortment of our supplier partners, our brand ambassadors, our celebrity partners, where they're going live from anywhere. Which I think is also unique in the sense that Rhee Drummond is going live from her ranch in Oklahoma. And Drew Barrymore is going live from her studio set in New York. And then you have the Paw Patrol team going live from an influencer that they partnered with who's a mom with kids who love Paw Patrol. And so the digital experiences side of the team is made up of shoppable livestreams. And why that has been so fun and successful is that this type of video content is giving customers the confidence to make purchases online. Because they're seeing again, a name or a face that they trust demo a product, talk about how they use a product, talk about the ingredients of a product, the inspiration behind a product. And it's actually getting customers to make purchases online for a product that maybe historically they would have bought in store.

[00:30:42] Brian: When you have an A list celebrity as beloved as Drew who can actually connect with her audiences in that way. That's super super unique. It's going to them in that moment.

[00:30:53] Justin : It's also a two way medium. So fans of Drew are watching and asking her questions and you have the chance of her answering a question. It's very much a surprise and delight, what's gonna happen because it's live medium. And I think that that makes it fun. The emerging experiences side of the team is made up of our platform strategy with platforms like Roblox. We will be expanding later this year onto other platforms. It's very much driven by our immersive commerce strategy. And so what we've got with Walmart Realm, how do we leverage what we've learned with Walmart Realm to apply that to other technologies and platforms? We're also leveraging AR. So we launched not too long ago, an AR extension for our Roblox experience that actually allows for customers to step inside Walmart Discovered to shop for virtual items, leveraging the Roblox gift card that they would have hypothetically bought at Walmart. And so it's creating diversified revenue for our brand. And it's rethinking how do we use these new technologies and emerging platforms to meet customers where they are online. And again, shorten that distance between inspiration and commerce. And so the team supports a lot of stuff. There's a lot more to come, which is exciting. And I'm sure there's stuff that we don't even know about yet that isn't in market that we'll find out about in six months or a year or two years that the team will hopefully have an opportunity to test and learn with.

[00:32:28] Phillip: There's a couple things that I wanna step through real quick, and these are things that we haven't talked about it, so I want you to just sort of confirm my suspicion. This seems like an obvious platform for promoting premier brand partnerships that Walmart has. For instance, you know, Dyson or Instax. These are kind of littered throughout the new rev of the experience where you have sort of like a, it's like a really nice showroom effect where there's a few products that look like they're curated. How much of this in the future? Sanrio is another great example of this. You're partnering with a brand to bring IP now into a world that's shoppable. So how much of your strategy is this? There's a future where brands can come in and inhabit these spaces. So in some way, like it's cooperative. On the other side, it's you know, there's IP realms. You're immersing yourself into another universe. Tell me a little bit about that. Is that, traditionally, I think in a retail setting, that would be seen as sort of like an advertising medium, but it seems like it's a totally different thing here.

[00:33:43] Justin : Yes. I can't share too much.

[00:33:48] Phillip: Okay. {laughter}

[00:33:48] Justin : But yeah, you're not far off in that there is an opportunity to bring in partners. We just talked about Drew. Partners like a Drew, right? What does a Drew space look like? Partners like a Netflix. What does a Netflix space look like? How do we leverage the IP that we have, be it a person or a title or a publisher like a Netflix. How do we leverage those partnerships in a way that feels mutually beneficial? Where they're leaning into our innovation, but we're also leveraging them to create awareness of the fact that again, yes Walmart sells grocery goods. Yes, you can get your paper towels at Walmart. But also you can buy Drew Barrymore's beautiful kitchen decor and cookware collection. Or you can buy all of your Stranger Things merch at Walmart. Again, there's a lack of awareness of just the broad assortment of the goods that Walmart sells. And I think these types of experiences are a means to actually create awareness of those goods and those partners in a way that feels like engaging where it's not just an ad, but it's actually like an experience and it resonates and it sticks with you, and that I think is where the value comes in.  

[00:35:13] Phillip: Totally.

[00:35:13] Brian: And I think this is so cool. We have this concept called the Multiplayer Brand at Feature Commerce, which is basically empowering your customers to help tell your brand story. But it's not just your customers, it's actually the community. It's anyone that's has a story to tell.

[00:35:28] Phillip: Your partner. I mean, it's your partners.

[00:35:29] Brian: Your partners. Yeah.

[00:35:30] Phillip: It's what you sell in the store.

[00:35:31] Brian: Exactly.

[00:35:31] Phillip: That's part of it. Sure.

[00:35:33] Brian: Exactly. And so I love this idea of bringing those stories and that discourse and giving it life. Right? I think that's what the opportunity here is through these more immersive digital experiences is to give people something to engage with and then talk about as well. I think that there's an angle of this that's really, it's about having narratives that people can bring into their own lives and share with others. And so fans of Drew can connect with other fans of Drew and talk about how they want to be able to configure their spaces based on Drew. And so I love the angle of giving space for narrative. I think that's super super cool.

[00:36:27] Justin : Totally. And I mean, I think like it's so important for us to partner with our supplier partners and our talent partners and, you know, allow them to provide feedback on how we can be good partners to them. But also one of the things that is important to all of the work that the team does is how do we always make sure specifically the work in emerging experiences where we are showing up on platforms or we are using technology, where there is often a community, a passionate community. It is so important to us to always ensure that we are giving the community a seat at our table to help inform the decisions that we make so that it's not just "Walmart's on Roblox." It's "Walmart's on Roblox, but we've partnered with a 100 members of the Roblox community to help inform some of the decisions that we've made, to create the free virtual items that we're giving away, to help curate the experiences and virtual items that you can buy or navigate." It's so important that we get feedback from every aspect of partnership that we enter into because it only makes what we're doing stronger and better. And I think we've learned that through the work that we've done on Roblox, on Spatial, and some of these forthcoming platforms that I loosely mentioned.

[00:37:49] Phillip: I'm so excited to hear what whatever's next.

[00:37:52] Brian: And you said earlier, sometimes that feedback is negative, and that's okay. That's healthy. It's good.

[00:37:58] Justin : Totally.

[00:37:59] Phillip: It's constructive.

[00:38:00] Brian: It's good to have that sort of open discourse about how to make things better or what you could do next or how to refine and as long as people are coming to it with, yeah, like Phillip said, constructive mindset. It can be so powerful to just like let that run and be a part of that.

[00:38:19] Justin : Totally. Or honestly, who is Walmart Realm not for? We've learned that through that qualitative... The studies that we've done with customers, we've learned that for some customers, it's just not for them because it is immersive. It is a place where they want to spend more time, but they're like, "I don't have time." And so it's helped inform alright, well really who we should be going after is x y and z because x y and z is spending a significant amount of time in this experience. They are becoming the word-of-mouth marketers who are telling their friends about Walmart. I think it's very much helping us understand what's good, what's bad, what's ugly. And all of the constructive feedback that we're getting is helping, again, just make us smarter and better. And it's all okay.

[00:39:17] Phillip: Sure. Yeah. When you're thinking about the the way that... It's overwrought, but, you know, the Henry Ford quote about if you'd ask someone what they want, what they need, they tell you a faster horse. I don't think that customers necessarily when approached from in a particular way, it's like asking them what they want, they imagine a very specific way that the future might look. A really creative futuristic view would say that we're going to create a brand new future. And I don't know that you can ask someone to create or invent a brand new future, but that's kind of your job. So, you know, how do you parse out what sort of feedback is pushing you more towards a normalization that's more like ecommerce versus where you're trying to get to, which is something that's more expansive and something much more discoverable? And who is that in your team that is parsing that feedback to say, "Well, maybe it should be a little more ecommerce like," or "No, this puts us sort of off the original intent of the mission."

[00:40:28] Brian: And just to add on to that just a tiny bit, but, yeah, like, something that's been running through my mind this whole interview is you keep saying, the word familiar, but what you're doing is really, really new.

[00:40:37] Justin : I think because these technologies and these platforms are emerging and the way in which we are entering them with a commerce component, I think it is important to have some aspects of it feel familiar. Because if it's so far from familiar, I fear there won't be enough learnings to inform a less familiar future where commerce actually is happening in these experiences more natively. Where they're not opening up a separate tab that has a pre populated walmart dot com cart where they reap the benefits, but that cart is being built on Walmart Realm. Maybe it's following them through the experience in a way that's immersive. And when they're making that purchase in Walmart Realm, it's happening there and then. And maybe they're unlocking something virtual that we're currently not exploring with Walmart Realm because the viewpoint is not, you don't have an avatar, you're navigating the experience through your mouse. But there is a future state where we start to have conversations around interoperability. And like what you get in Walmart Realm transfers to Walmart Discovered, transfers to spatial, transfers to X platform. That word is a word that very much was a part of like the early conversations of the metaverse. But people have kind of walked away from that. But we know that gaming is not going away. We know that virtual environments and technology is not going away. So how do we lean into something new but have components that feel familiar to help inform that less familiar approach in the future where it might be a little bit more integrated?

[00:42:24] Brian: I was just thinking about the way that you're doing that with creators the audience is already familiar with them. I think that's a super smart way to do it back to what you said about Drew who's actually is sort of cross generational now at this point where she had there's the millennials like me who grew up with her movies, but you have this next generation with her show. It's like a sort of a perfect, multigenerational viewpoint on a well, at this point, really a personality, I should probably call her. And bringing that in helps with that familiarity even if it is a totally new experience. It's part of who they are. Their audience is familiar with them.

[00:43:11] Justin : Yeah. I mean, even with Walmart Discovered on Roblox, we were the first brand to introduce real world commerce on Roblox, which was obviously very exciting. But it also comes with a risk where you have 77,000,000 daily active users that very easily could have been like, "This is dumb. We don't want this." But we got the complete opposite reception, which was people were excited about it. And people were embracing it and were engaging with it, and they were going through the commerce flow. And I think part of that is because we partnered with Roblox creators to pick the products, to then create the virtual item that you got with the purchase of that product. And so it wasn't Walmart saying, "Here's real world commerce on Roblox." It was these Roblox creators that these people look to and trust who were like, "I'm so excited. I got to partner with Walmart on this real world commerce drop" where they chose the item, and then they created a virtual twin that was not a twin, but was like a fantastical representation of that item. And it was representative of that creator. So if you were a fan of the creator, maybe you bought the tumbler to get that virtual tumbler. Right? How do we, with all that we do, look for those elements of feel familiarity, but also push the boundaries of what's possible to, quite frankly, just get the learnings to inform a future state?

[00:44:40] Brian: Yeah. The psychological familiarity is the key. Even if it's in a new experience, it's the psychological connection point. I think that you're dead on. That's super cool. When you go to think about the next like round of innovation and maybe it's related to Realm, maybe it's related to other experiences you're creating, what are some of the KPIs that you put against things? How are you measuring success? What are the ways that you're thinking about what innovation to go after next? And what's sort of the general methodology for putting the next thing in queue? Yeah.

[00:45:18] Justin : Yeah. So you it because we always have a learning agenda with all that we do, we have a good understanding of what is it that we tested to date? What have we learned? And then how do we use those learnings to inform, of course, what we're doing in our existing platforms like Walmart Discovered on Roblox, Walmart Realm, our AR experience for Walmart Discovered, and use those to inform where do we go next? Like what platforms do we look to expand upon? What technologies do we look to use? How does our narrative as a team evolve both internally and externally? So if I come back in a year, what I talk about and how I talk about the work that we're doing will probably be different. Because we've learned enough to understand the strategy that we need to move forward with for next year on the platforms we're already on, but also the platforms we plan to launch onto. And so as we think about success, it's like obviously continued innovation, where we're already at, but where we're going. So how do we look to do things that haven't been done before? How do we continue to identify opportunities where we can introduce real world commerce? Do I think that any of these introductions of real world commerce on these new platforms are going to be, you know, a billion dollar industry next year? Probably not next year. But if we're early and we test and learn, in two, three, five years, it could be a billion dollar industry. And it might not just be the sale of real world goods, but the sale of virtual goods. Because we've started to dabble in both, meaning we're learning now, we're testing now, and we can use both of what we've learned and tested to inform again, like that platform expansion, that strategy evolution. And so success to us is again, like continued innovation. Obviously, getting people to come into the things that we've built. So I very much like, I don't believe if you build it, they will come. I think if you build it, you have to give them a reason to come. So I said earlier we wanna add value. So wherever we're showing up, it's really important that we're adding value. And it has to add value for that platform and that community. So what we've done on Roblox probably wouldn't be applicable to a Minecraft or Fortnite. Right? Like there are learnings that are applicable, but the concept has to be different. The way in which we engage with the community has to be different. And so, you know, I think it's again, it's innovation. It's getting people to engage with us and engagement being meaningful time spent. How do we again get to that ritualistic behavior where they come in once or twice or three times? But it's a destination that they're going to on that platform that they're spending their time. And then how do we get them to like convert? And convert might be different based on the platform or technology. But getting us to a place where we can confidently say like, "We've told a story around continued innovation for Walmart. Walmart is now the most adaptive retailer. We are doing things on Roblox. We are doing things with immersive commerce. We've expanded to these platforms and technologies, plus all the amazing work that other people at Walmart are doing around getting goods to people's homes quicker, expediting processes internally through the use of technology." And so leaning that, helping drive and leaning into that conversation around Walmart being an adaptive retailer, and then having the actual stats around the engagement and time spent and the shift in perception. And then over time, conversion that is meaningful to the brand and business in a way that gets us to that sort of like, this is a billion dollar industry. And we were early, but we believed in it. It was a big bet. And now we're a leader.

[00:49:12] Phillip: I like jumping up and down. Implicitly you just outlined too one of the questions I was going to ask. I think you already covered it there is what's the kind of advice you can give to other people who are trying to run innovation in their own team? How do you outline protecting the core while building the future and building the future requires a lot of buy in from leadership. But also you do kind of have to prove success at some point in the future. I think you have to be it sounds like you are, you know, I'd say, passionate and fanatical about what you're working on. You believe in it fully and you've thought through it and you're starting to see the results of it. I think that that's very inspiring to a lot of folks who are looking to try to do the same. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Justin. Justin Breton is the Head of Brand Marketing Innovation at Walmart, and I hope to have you back again on the show soon.

[00:50:13] Justin : Thanks for having me.

[00:50:14] Phillip: Yeah. And thank you for listening to Future Commerce. You can find more episodes of this podcast and all Future Commerce properties at futurecommerce.com. Join the Plus membership so that you can get ad free versions of this episode on a private feed and After Darks where Brian waxes poetic and philosophic. And I ask him what he means by that. So you could get all of that right now by joining the executive membership at futurecommerce.com/plus. Thank you for listening to this episode of Future Commerce.

[00:50:44] Alicia: It has been incredible witnessing Justin's ideas become reality. From Walmart Unlimited to Walmart Discovered, mobile first gaming, and so much more. Beyond the creative expansion, which is amazing, these experiences have also paid dividends for the core Walmart business. And again, that wasn't the goal. Even though conversions were not top of mind, the stories are so rich, the spaces are so aesthetically pleasing, the challenges and gaming components are so dynamic, the curation so spot on. It's all so strong together that you can't help but wanna make a purchase. As consumers continue to spend more time in these gaming platforms to discover, create, and connect with each other as well as the brand, The brands that win will be the ones that focus on the core fundamentals of community building, gamification, even co creation, not ecommerce fundamentals. Now this episode is only forty five minutes of a much longer, richer discussion about the shift from linear ecommerce experiences to dynamic, immersive, adaptive gaming environments. If you want the unedited version, the one that really digs deep into some of the incredible insights from Justin, be sure to check out our latest book, Lore. It's a 280 page tome, a big guy exploring brand storytelling, myth making, and who really writes the stories that shape our world, our culture, and our behaviors. You can grab your copy today to explore even more incredible interviews, articles, poems, visual essays, and stories that are shaping the future of culture and commerce. Just go to shop.futurecommerce.com to get your copy today.

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