Is this dopey Christmas romcom the harbinger of the TV retail experience apocalypse?
The promised future of TV is finally here. And it is in the form of Roku’s original Christmas movie Jingle Bell Love.
No, really. This is the trailer and before you press play, know that the movie is almost exactly what you think it is.
Jack Cooper, played by Joey McIntyre from "New Kids on the Block," visits his late wife's hometown for Christmas and gets more than he bargained for when his 10-year-old daughter matches him up with a local shop owner (Michelle Morgan).
Despite the fact that there are so many great movies out there that people haven’t made the time to watch, there will still be plenty of folks pressing play on this generic Christmas movie.
And when they do, what they will discover is that the film is an interactive advertising exercise for US chain Walmart.
Last year Walmart experimented with a 23-episode romcom TV series called Add To Heart. It was produced by Walmart and included around 330 shoppable products into the show. Viewers watching via TikTok, Roku, and YouTube could then buy products seen on the show directly from the retailer.
Here’s a WSJ explainer on Add To Heart:
The show didn’t quite work for Walmart. But they learned a number of lessons from last year’s experiment and are back again with a more refined experience.
With Add To Heart they learned that the longer people watched, the more likely they were to shop - they’re hoping viewers will watch the longer, feature-length Jingle Bell Love from start to finish.
The film also scaled back the number of shoppable moments. There are just two in the film, which feature “overlays with five Walmart products that are contextually relevant to the scene that people can buy directly on their TVs.”
While the TV series was multi-platform, Walmart this year are more focused on Roku, which produced the movie with them. As per Business Insider:
Walmart said Roku was a natural partner, as 78% of the platform's audience are Walmart shoppers. Despite the large customer overlap, in the past couple of years of testing, Walmart said 70% of its shoppers from Roku were new to Walmart.com.
Of course, it is one thing to create TV movies with shoppable moments, but they’re taking it further by adding shoppable ad breaks in sponsored family films, which will include Stuart Little and Miracle on 34th Street.
Being able to shop from TV shows has been promised for years and years, but has never really embedded into the way we watch and engage with our movies & TV shows. I doubt that this effort is going to change that either.
But why hasn’t it happened? My immediate thought is that it comes down to partnerships and for shoppable integration to actually work, it would require a streamer to go all-in with a single retailer. Otherwise, the experience is just too fractured and inconsistent taking viewers off to multiple shopping destinations.
That makes complete sense to me, but why then hasn’t Amazon done a better job of integrating it’s world-class retail store into it’s Prime Video television platform?
As gross as shoppable television feels, I also know I have sat on the couch with that “Oh, that’s a cool shirt. Where do I get that?” thought. There’s an obvious utility to this as an idea. It all just rests in the implementation and right now no one has quite nailed it - but Walmart is giving it a good shot.
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