Bob's Your Uncle

Walmart’s “RomCommerce” and the Future of Shoppable Stories

When your holiday rom-com is really a Walmart cart.

Walmart’s 23-episode shoppable series “Add to Heart” is one of the boldest experiments in “RomCommerce” to date – a Hallmark-style holiday rom-com where almost everything on screen is for sale. In Strategy’s expert panel, Bob Froese weighed in on why this kind of content is a perfect fit for Walmart’s brand and customers.

Coverage

Strategy – “Industry experts dissect Walmart’s RomCommerce”
URL: https://strategyonline.ca/2024/01/09/industry-experts-dissect-walmarts-romcommerce/

“Imagine your typical Hallmark holiday rom com but everything you see is for sale… Walmart introduced its own shoppable content this past holiday season in the form of a 23-episode romantic comedy called Add to Heart…”

“‘As much as this is not something I could ever bring myself to watch… I love it for Walmart,’ says Bob Froese, founder and CCO of Toronto-based creative shop Bob’s Your Uncle. ‘Everything about it – from the cheesy mashup “RomCommerce” title to the less-than-academy-award-winning films seems like a perfect fit for Walmart.’”

The article goes on to explore user experience differences across TikTok, Roku and YouTube and debates how many episodes is too many before shoppers drop off.

Why This Matters

Being invited to dissect Walmart’s experiment puts Bob’s Your Uncle in the middle of a bigger conversation about:

Shoppable content and retail media
The line between commerce and entertainment
How mass brands can test new formats without losing their soul