SITUATION:

Walmart’s mission is to help people live better, in each of the 2,800+ communities that it’s in across America. For the past eight years, Walmart has organized an annual campaign to combat food insecurity with its program “Fight Hunger. Spark Change.” Hunger had been a crisis in America, long before COVID-19 arrived. But the disruption to the economy and dramatic increase in unemployment led to an increase in need in 2021.

BRIEF:

Our ambition for this year’s campaign was to get people to understand how important community support is to combatting hunger and feel inspired to get involved.

OBJECTIVES:

Our goals for the program were two-fold:

• Drive participation in the program to help provide meals for the food insecure.

• Change perceptions from Walmart is in my community to Walmart is an advocate for my community.

Our creative idea reframed the conversation from the problem to the possibilities. When we feed people who are hungry, we’re feeding much more than their hunger. We’re feeding their confidence, their dreams, their ambition, their hope, and their potential. We shifted the focus from the size of the problem to the positive outcomes and human potential that are fed when people and communities come together to support each other.

Rather than leaving “possibilities” to the audience’s imagination, we told an inspiring story of an accomplished public figure who had succeeded despite facing food insecurity. Building on an existing partnership, we asked Gloria James and her son, LeBron James, to tell their story of leaning on their community to overcome food insecurity and realize their dreams.

In previous years, we focused on making people aware of the need by illuminating the problem. Given the multitude of worthy social causes dominating the national conversation, we knew that raising awareness wouldn’t be enough to reach the outcomes the community needed. We had to make a deeper emotional connection to why our customers should participate in the program.

Research told us that people wanted to donate to causes where they could see an impact locally, and those who care about hunger relief are 60% more inclined to support charities that benefit children. We targeted a charitably-inclined segment online and in social media, where conversations about the increased need for hunger relief were losing the battle for America’s attention.

Rather than calling attention to the issue of food insecurity, our approach was to reframe the conversation to be about the positive impact that a community can make.

The central piece of this campaign is an emotional film. In it, an unidentified woman describes being a single mom, being food insecure, and trying to raise her son. She describes how her community helped her and her son when they needed food the most, and how the community fed more than his stomach, they fed his potential. As she explains why programs like “Fight Hunger. Spark Change.” are important to her and her son, we see family photos of her son growing up. We then reveal a portrait of the woman with her son as an adult, LeBron James.

We launched the film in a segment on “The Today Show,” and promoted it as an Instagram Story and IGTV from Walmart, followed by similar posts from LeBron and Gloria.

• Most importantly, we’ve already secured over 250MM meals for the food insecure, with a week left to go in the campaign.

• Generated upwards of 2.6MM earned impressions from LeBron and Gloria James’ Instagram posts alone, with more than 6K comments on those posts

• Nearly 1MM (910K) impressions from other earned media across news sources and social media

• Earned media received an overwhelmingly positive social sentiment of 76% based on linguistic analysis of social mentions

• WOM exposure in the first week saw a 22% lift from the week prior.

• Positive buzz during that first week saw a 7% lift from the week prior.