Media Credit: Walmart.com
If someone could guess your zodiac sign based on your taste in ice cream or decide which country you should live in, it’d be Buzzfeed.
So what does that have to do with Walmart, one of the biggest retail chains? The big-box store has always been working to create a unique experience for its customers and what they want, and what they want is BuzzFeed – well, Buzzfeed’s Tasty.
Media Credit: Tasty.co
Tasty Takes on Walmart
If you know Buzzfeed – which I think you do unless you just got access to the internet, like, today – then I assume you know Tasty. In July 2015, BuzzFeed launched a Facebook page called Tasty, now well-known for its viral short 60-second videos, or, as they liked to call them, “snack-sized” videos of comfort food recipes.
And Tasty is what Buzzfeed’s got to do with Walmart: The 2019 collab no one saw coming.
Tasty’s early success led to an independent official Tasty website and efforts to reach a broader audience by sharing different food content in different languages. BuzzFeed rolled out content in regional languages and created separate pages like Tasty Demais (Portuguese), Tasty Japan and Tasty Italy. It then created an app for followers to check food videos and recipes, cluding video stories, full recipes and tips from other users.
It’s no exaggeration to say this app turned out to be the start of a beautiful friendship for superpowers Walmart and Buzzfeed. In 2019, they decided to take a new step in the race of contextual commerce by launching new add-to-bag capabilities and ad sales opportunities. This collab started off through Tasty and Walmart apps as an in-app feature that connects them both. So, on the app, a customer can watch a recipe video, then decide they want to make that recipe. They can then choose the ingredients and click on the app feature that’ll allow them to add recipe ingredients from Tasty directly to Walmart's online grocery cart for pickup or delivery.
Not only that, but this collaboration enabled both companies to collaborate on consumer products across multiple categories, including e-commerce, media, marketing and more. Some more recent product collabs include a Tasty-branded cookware line featuring more than 90 products, ranging from non-stick cookware to bakeware to accessories and more. Epoca International produces the line for Buzzfeed, which is available exclusively at Walmart.
Media Credit: BuzzFeed Tasty
And with that, the customer experience jumped from scrolling through thousands of food videos to actually being able to get the ingredients needed without having to waste time looking for them, all within the same app.
“Finding that perfect recipe, creating a grocery list and finally getting to the store can keep any chef out of the kitchen,” Walmart’s Chief Customer Officer Janey Whiteside said. “We’re excited to create a fun solution that feeds customers appetites to put time back in their busy schedules all while saving money with Walmart’s everyday low prices.”
Media Credit: BuzzFeed Tasty
Happy Customers, Happy Partners
Customers are being bombarded with advertising day in and day out. But they no longer want to be sold via traditional ads. Now, what’s important is the buying experience itself. This is where the importance of building relationships with customers through collaborations comes into play. This lets companies find a fresh and engaging new way of educating customers about their options and helping them make decisions faster and more effectively. Buzzfeed and Walmart’s collaboration did exactly that. And after gaining loyal customers, they even offered them the chance to buy cute Tasy-branded cooking tools sold only at Walmart.
It also shows how paying attention to how the services or products are being presented greatly affects the customer's shopping behavior and their decision to purchase or use this product. In Walmart and Buzzfeed collab, they minimized the effort the customer would make to check out and complete a purchase by making it easy to see food videos and recipes and shop in-app for those recipes. This also gave Tasty videos more value by making it eaasier for customers to make the recipes they checked.
Collaborations bring an audience directly from one brand to another. Through these one-of-a-kind experiences, companies can remove barriers between the desire of the customer and hitting the checkout button, which also helps to boost revenue and attract more customers for all parties involved.
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