Dive Brief:

• Walmart is launching a campaign called "Joy. Fully" featuring shoppable livestreams and shoppable content, including recipes, the retail giant announced on Friday.  
• The company is also introducing the first large-scale launch of shoppable recipes on Pinterest. The initiative allows consumers to seamlessly add ingredients to their Walmart carts for easy purchase. Through a partnership with Facebook, Walmart is offering an augmented reality lens that lets consumer use their facial expressions to pick the products that "spark joy" for them and then shop Walmart's "gift finder experience."
• The announcement builds on Walmart's shoppable recipe efforts as it looks to make it easier for consumers to plan meals and purchase ingredients. 

Dive Insight:

Walmart stated that consumers increasingly want to discover products through "content-to-commerce" means. 

With the shoppable recipes on Pinterest, Walmart is offering cooking and baking ideas from its supplier partners, including General Mills, Kraft and PepsiCo. Walmart Connect is using the Pinterest Trend Badge program, which combines high-growth searches with the official Pinterest stamp of approval, to promote "the most relevant and of-the-moment seasonal ideas" like “easy bite-size desserts,” which are up 462% year-over-year, the retailer said.

In September, Walmart announced a cross-platform partnership with the Meredith Corporation featuring artificial intelligence-powered meal planning, shoppable recipes, visual search, chatbots and more to help people plan and make meals. Earlier this year, the retailer expanded its shoppable video hub with celebrity cooking shows. 

The retailer said it plans to host the campaign's shoppable livestreams with multiple publishers, well-known influencers and others, but didn't disclose any further details.

Walmart's collaborations with Pinterest and Facebook are a continuation of the retailer's efforts to reach new consumers through livestreams and AR technology. For example, the retail giant hosted a shoppable livestream concert featuring musician Kane Brown in August to amp up back-to-school enthusiasm and has hosted several shoppable livestreams on TikTok.

In its announcement, Walmart touted the success of its partner brand experience when using Walmart Connect, its media business, to reach shoppers. Per its figures from Q4 2020, campaigns in the food, clothing, consumables and toys categories experienced a 13% increase in reach.

"With our newly expanded capabilities, partnerships, supplier integrations and customer activations, we're excited to unlock an even wider range of omnichannel touch points this holiday to connect brands with customers through innovative technologies and inspiring social content," Kara Rousseau, vice president of marketing at Walmart Connect, wrote in the announcement.