Black Friday is one of the busiest days for both shoppers and retailers, and in recent years, many customers have started to shop Black Friday deals online. For our 2021 Black Friday Deals for Days, we knew we couldn’t just make an ad. We had to build an experience that got people hyped for Walmart’s holiday deals, turned a solitary online shopping experience into a shared venture, and spread joy across TikTok.
To achieve those goals, we launched #DealGuesser — a joyful take on the uber popular Head’s Up game, featuring 10 of Walmart's Black Friday Deals for Days displayed in a gamified TikTok Branded Effect and Hashtag Challenge that got people sharing IRL and on the platform. As a cooperative experience, The filter challenged fans to grab a friend and guess as many deals as possible in 24 seconds. While one player gave hints about the deal shown on the screen, the other player took a guess. With every answer, the players tilted to accrue points for a correct guess, or to pass on an incorrect guess.
To spread the joy and encourage others to join the fun, we partnered with six top creators to show TikTokkers how to use the Branded Effect, and even took over the TopView on TikTok for 24 hours on Black Friday with Celina Myers (@celinaspookyboo). Each of the other 5 creators — The Splash Twinz (@splashtwinz), Kyle Exum (@kyleexum), Chris Olsen (@chris), The Scott Family (@_thescottfamily), and Zachariah Porter (@zzzachariah) — showed fans how to play the game and made us laugh along the way with their hints and guesses.
The dedicated Hashtag Challenge page and #DealGuesser Hashtag Challenge page helped reach other TikTokers and encouraged them to creator their own videos and add to the challenge — continuing the spread of joy across the platform.
Throughout the three-day campaign, we generated 3.5 billion video views, 456 million engagements, and 1.8 million uses of the #DealGuesser, driving mass awareness for Walmart’s Black Friday Deals for Days.
These results are impressive in their own right, and even more so in the context of platform-wide activity on TikTok. #DealGuesser was the 6th most viewed hashtag in the U.S. on TikTok — ranking even higher than #Thanksgiving, during Thanksgiving weekend — and the 3rd most used hashtag on new videos uploaded during that time frame.
To build upon the successful social metrics, we also saw a positive impact in brand lift — including a 9.9% increase in ad recall and 5.2% increase in brand favorability — for Walmart
