Walmart – Taste of the NFL took the NFL's most purpose-driven event and turned it into Walmart's biggest retail media moment three years in a row
AWARDS
The Campaign was acknowledged as a finalist, for Digiday Awards 2024 – Best Use of Retail Media
(In the official Digiday Awards shortlist, the category Best Use of Retail Media)
Check out the landing page:
LONG STORY SHORT
The NFL had the cultural heat. Walmart had the stores, the data, and the shoppers.
The idea was simple: Extend Taste of the NFL into the community, from a shoppable digital hub on Walmart.com to food trucks rolling through neighborhoods nationwide to four full store takeovers in hosting cities the week of the Big Game.
The Result
A buzz-worthy 360 retail media campaign that gave brands a stage, gave shoppers a reason to engage.
The kind of campaign that doesn't just hit its number — it earns a second season. And a third. Growing bigger every year it comes back.
DEEP DIVE
How do you take an invite-only NFL event and make it feel like everyone's party?
THE challenge
Taste of the NFL had been the Super Bowl's best-kept secret for over 30 years, a star-studded, sell-out gala the night before the Big Game. Chefs. Players. A cause. Great food. Zero access for the average fan.
Walmart Connect's job wasn't to sponsor that event. It was to borrow its cultural credibility and build something bigger, a retail media platform that could connect Walmart shoppers to the energy of the Big Game, give advertiser brands prime real estate in that moment, and drive real commerce at scale.
THE BIG IDEA
"Get In The Game." A creative system and rally cry built to scale across every surface of the campaign. Food truck wraps, a 25-foot floor mat, a digital game on Walmart.com, a shoppable landing page. One idea living everywhere at once, built to make Walmart the place where America gets ready for the Big Game.
The platform gave participating brands a unified world to show up in.
Each brand (Pepsi, Doritos, Hellmann's, Hormel, Tide, Tyson, Totino's, Oikos) had its own space within the ecosystem, but the creative architecture made it feel like one cohesive experience rather than a sponsorship patchwork.
The Execution
Digital: Taste of The Site
We built a rich brand page on Walmart.com designed around how fans actually prep for game day. Modular content containers let shoppers self-select their experience — heading to a party, throwing one, or just stocking up. A 1-click recipe hub featured celebrity chefs like Carla Hall and Josh Capon. A shoppable livestream brought the event energy online. Brands showed up contextually, not as banner ads — woven into the moment where purchase decisions were actually being made.
The campaign came to life across 40+ physical touchpoints:
Physical Stores
For the 2025 campaign, 20 mobile food truck events rolled through major U.S. cities, wrapped in the "Get In The Game" creative and branded for partner suppliers. 20 co-branded in-store events gave Level 1 suppliers (Pepsi, Doritos, Hellmann's, Hormel) a full activation zone complete with chef demos, a custom gameday apron heat press station, a digital "Goal Line Grocery Toss" game, and tiered prize giveaways.
Every detail designed: the floor mat, the backwalls, the inflatable 8-foot football, the branded napkins, the apparel worn by staff.
Then came New Orleans
The week of Super Bowl LIX, Walmart executed 4 marquee in-store takeovers in the hosting city (the biggest physical footprint of the entire campaign) timed to the Taste of the NFL gala at the National WWII Museum, where Walmart was the exclusive retail partner.
Social & Influencer
Macro and mega creators activated across TikTok and Instagram, driving traffic back to the shoppable hub. Celebrity chef Josh Capon posted custom content. Every social touchpoint was engineered to convert — not just create awareness.
My Role
As Creative Director, I led this campaign end-to-end — from the original "Get In The Game" platform concept through every executional touchpoint. That meant the digital UX content strategy, the in-store environmental design system, the food truck wrap, the apparel, the games, the signage, the social creative direction, and the live event experience in New Orleans.
The creative challenge was making 8+ brands feel like one campaign, across digital and physical, at Walmart scale. That required a system, not just a look. Building that system — and then executing it across every surface — is what I'm most proud of here.
The Numbers
$25M+ in Walmart Connect revenue
1.75 million meals donated through partner activations
96,000+ shopper interactions across in-store events
63,000+ recipe booklets distributed
22,000+ pageviews to the digital hub
40+ physical activations across the U.S.
4 New Orleans marquee takeovers during Super Bowl week
Digiday Awards 2024 — Shortlisted, Best Use of Retail Media
CREDITS CD / Creative Direction & Creative Strategy: Orlando Bogado | Design/Copy & Art Direction: WMC Integrated Creative Team | Marketing Strategy: WMC Client Solutions | Agency Partner: RSM (Activation Plan) Electric Factory (Landing Page production) | Program: Walmart Connect x Taste of the NFL FY25