In a puzzling (to me) PR move, Walmart has created two “experiences” in the popular meta-verse game Roblox.
Roblox has an overwhelmingly young player base and the Walmart experiences are designed to target the “next generation” of Walmart shoppers with celebrity cameos and games featuring popular children’s toys.
I can’t help but feel that the young demographic of Roblox combined with Walmart’s child-focused content could be in breach of various standards governing marketing to children. It’s all very dystopian…
There are also some interesting jurisdictional issues here – Roblox is an international platform and certain areas with stricter marketing laws (such as the EU) might have different responses to real-world adverting in the metaverse.
Also, given the general attitude of mockery around the metaverse, this seems like a misguided PR move. It doesn’t help that they are selling branded merch in Roblox and calling it “verch” (virtual merch).
Sources:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2022/10/04/walmart-enters-metaverse-with-roblox-experiences/
https://www.betterinternetforkids.eu/practice/articles/article?id=6969918
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/26/business/walmart-roblox-metaverse/index.html
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Thanks for posting about this – Walmart Land is such a bizzare concept!
It reminded me that I saw a video of someone testing it yesterday if anyone’s interested (note: it’s also a comedy video with a certain style of humor but at least it shows off what we’re talking about)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sh2Ib3DklI
They also include a test run of Walmart’s VR shopping software which is also a lot to digest – apparently it came from all the way back in 2017 which is eye-opening to me, since I didn’t really hear much about these projects back then.
https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2022/1/5/22868323/walmart-metaverse-shopping-video-viral-old
I hope someone finds this interesting!
Thank you for posting this. I laughed really hard that they decided to call it ‘verch’. I wonder if the fact that this was done in the meta-verse has any additional implications beyond just doing it in a regular video game. I know from time to time such things happen. I remember back in the day that Louis Vuitton and League of Legends had some sort of a collaboration in which characters in the game were wearing virtual Louis Vuitton pieces to advertise the brand (see here: https://ca.louisvuitton.com/fra-ca/magazine/articles/louis-vuitton-x-league-of-legends#) . I agree that this is very dystopian and that there should be some sort of additional regulations due to the fact that it is often younger populations targeted by these advertising campaigns.
Thank you for posting this. I laughed really hard that they decided to call it ‘verch’. I wonder if the fact that this was done in the meta-verse has any additional implications beyond just doing it in a regular video game. I know from time to time such things happen. I remember back in the day that Louis Vuitton and League of Legends had some sort of a collaboration in which characters in the game were wearing virtual Louis Vuitton pieces to advertise the brand (see here: https://ca.louisvuitton.com/fra-ca/magazine/articles/louis-vuitton-x-league-of-legends#) . I agree that this is very dystopian and that there should be some sort of additional regulations due to the fact that it is often younger populations targeted by these advertising campaigns. – rares