Walmart MEDIA GROUP – The beginning helped transform Walmart’s internal creative pilot program into a fully operational, trusted in-house agency.

Role: Creative Lead & Strategic Partner The Shift: From "Internal Production Team" to "Strategic Revenue Engine."

LONG STORY SHORT

Led a cross-functional in-house crew responsible for helping advertisers show up inside the Walmart ecosystem with purpose. 

• Instead of average banners, we helped big brands tell stories that made Walmart ad space feel like brands actually belonged there.

This evolution shifted the team from a production unit into a strategic partner, capable of delivering integrated, brand-safe work at enterprise scale.

• To achieve this, I helped build Walmart’s in-house agency, focusing on the transition from a production-line model to a strategic creative partner, leading a global team of 60+ to redesign the digital ad experience.

DEEP DIVE

Building Creative Foundations

The Context:

In June 2019, Walmart Media Group brought its digital agency in-house to bridge the critical gap between physical stores and digital properties. At the time, the internal creative team was still in its pilot phase.

The challenge:

As one of the first Creative Leads, I was tasked with a critical mandate: Reshape advertiser perception of Walmart Ads. We needed to shift the narrative from a low-tier performance channel to a premium, brand-safe storytelling platform powered by retail intelligence.

The Execution:

Partnering with the newly formed internal team and Walmart’s Brand Creative Studio, I played a pivotal role in evolving this pilot initiative into a fully integrated, scalable in-house agency.

Our mission was to elevate creative output through trust, innovation, and consistency, ensuring every touchpoint reflected both Walmart’s brand voice and advertiser objectives.

challenge accepted

The original challenge was straightforward yet complicated: We needed to gain advertiser trust and elevate the user experience simultaneously.

The work below demonstrates how we utilized native ads to create a holistic, inspirational ecosystem. These designs proved that Walmart.com could deliver high-quality creative that protected brand integrity while driving engagement.

GENESIS

My role was to turn the internal team into a strategic creative engine. By raising the bar on quality and process, we changed the conversation: we stopped selling 'shelf space' and started selling 'story space.'

• Led a global design team of 60+ across the US, UK, India and Uruguay, establishing cohesive design systems and "brand guardrails" that allowed advertisers to be bold and creative without breaking the Walmart brand.

• We redesigned the ad experience on Walmart.com, integrated creative automation (Thunder), and proved that Walmart could be a storytelling platform, not just functional product placement.

  RESULTS

  This transformation helped drive over $2 billion for FY2020 (ending Jan 31, 2020), with ads driving significant percentage growth, consistently growing much faster than Walmart's overall sales and e-commerce growth.

Reinventing the Creative Process

The internal creative model was production-centered: safe, fast, and templated, but creatively flat. Success was measured by volume, not impact. This process limited innovation and reinforced external perceptions of slow, low-quality work.

Elevated the Work

Brought in top-tier creative talent, built playbooks, and established new workflows that prioritized ideas over templates.

Managed a global design team of 60+ across the US, along with the offshore teams across India, the UK, and Uruguay to ensure consistent quality. 

Advocated for culture-led, emotionally intelligent work that pushed creative boundaries without losing business relevance

Scaled the Tech

We redesigned the ad experience on Walmart.com, integrated creative automation (Thunder), and proved that Walmart could be a storytelling platform, not just functional product placement.

Operational Efficiency: As part of Walmart’s push toward creative automation and a self-serve display portal, I was asked to evaluate Thunder, a Creative Management Platform (CMP) Walmart was considering acquiring.

I assessed the platform’s ability to meet creative standards across formats and provided input that supported its adoption.

My assessment of the platform’s potential was a key factor in its adoption. Thunder was subsequently acquired by Walmart and rebranded as the Walmart Creative Builder, becoming the core engine for scaling self-serve creative to thousands of advertisers.

IMPACT

This transformation helped drive over $2 billion for FY2020 (Public information), with ads driving significant percentage growth, consistently growing much faster than Walmart's overall sales and e-commerce growth.

• The quality and ambition of work increased dramatically. 

• Creative was no longer a production checkpoint, it became a strategic partner in the business. 

• The studio evolved into a trusted space for innovation, brand-building, and breakthrough campaigns. 

We stopped just making banner ads, and started making impact.

Creative Certification Program

We realized that to get premium results, we needed premium inputs. We developed a comprehensive educational ecosystem that taught advertisers how to build for Walmart. This evolved into a strict 'Quality Gate,' a mandatory program agencies had to clear before gaining direct access to our self-serve tools, virtually eliminating low-quality creative from the feed.

RESULTS

• We shifted from passive guidelines to active governance.

• We developed a mandatory creative accreditation curriculum that agencies were required to pass to unlock self-serve publishing privileges.

• Gated the platform, ensuring that only high-quality, brand-compliant assets could go live.
  

Eventually, this initiative grew into its own operational pillar, encompassing monthly webinars, live best-practice sessions, and in-person training that ultimately laid the foundation for Walmart Connect's dedicated Creative Strategy Team.