Justin Breton, Head of Brand Marketing Innovation, Walmart
Justin Breton is all about embracing the unknown and taking a chance on new technologies. In his role as head of brand marketing innovation at Walmart, he oversees content-to-commerce initiatives that engage with customers in meaningful ways and get them thinking differently about Walmart—not just as a retailer, but also as a digital destination.
The brand has evolved its digital strategy by venturing into shoppable livestreams with Walmart Live and launching activations in gaming platforms Roblox, Spatial and Zepeto. Last month, Walmart created its own Minecraft Java server, Walmart Skyward, capturing the momentum around “A Minecraft Movie,” which was released in theaters this week.
According to Breton, it’s a chapter-based experience built exclusively for the Minecraft fandom, where players embark on a space adventure to find a lost friend. While Walmart Skyward is not an official Minecraft service, the online activation, with an accompanying Discord server, shows Walmart is stepping further into gaming to connect with the next generation of consumers beyond its brick-and-mortar presence.
In this episode, Breton, who was featured in Event Marketer’s inaugural class of The Watchlist, delves into Walmart’s virtual innovations and its expansion into emerging platforms and experiences. He shares how brands can explore the intersection of physical and digital as they look to add virtual extensions to marketing campaigns and scale community engagement. Plus, he takes us through his career that’s “been a little bit of a zig and a zag,” starting in magazines out of college, moving into tech startups and finally landing at Walmart.
“We have identified partners and opportunities that really allow for us to connect with consumers, specifically a younger demographic, where they are and bring commerce to them in a way that feels native and seamless,” Breton says. “This also feels like a pivotal moment in my career, where we are scratching the surface of what could be, and I’m excited to see how it performs, what we learn, how we can use those learnings to be better at what we’re trying to do.”
