Join the Gilmore Girls in the “Give the Gifts that Show You Get Them” Campaign
The holiday season is upon us, and with it, holiday advertising. The winter holidays are traditionally the most important time of the year in retail, and this year is shaping up to be no exception, especially with respect to online shopping. This year, Walmart’s brand strategy marketing for the holiday season highlights the online channel and showcases its accessible yet aspirational brand strategy.
In this article, I’ll discuss Walmart’s “Give the Gifts that Show You Get Them” Campaign, first describing the campaign as a whole and then focusing on its deep investment into the Gilmore Girls intellectual property and how it relates to the broader brand strategy marketing at work in the campaign. This campaign includes some surprising elements, including an entry into Walmart’s brand-new and very online “Ambient Room” videos. All of these elements combine into brilliant brand strategy marketing.
Let’s begin with the ad that kicked off the campaign: a 60-second video published in October 2024. Both the main message of the ad and all of the details that Walmart chose reflect Walmart’s clever brand strategy marketing. The ad’s message is clear from its slogan: give the gifts that show you get them. The most important element of a gift is not its cost, but the degree of care and knowledge that went into its selection. In other words, it’s the thought that counts. This overall message is perfect for Walmart’s brand strategy marketing. Walmart is a value brand. By focusing on the idea that a reasonably-priced gift can make a big impact, Walmart positions its products as ideal gifts for cost-conscious consumers.
The details of the ad, too, reflect the brand’s commitment to an accessible and aspirational experience that never alienates customers. One detail is diversity. The ad includes a great deal of both racial and ethnic diversity, opening with a shot of a grandmotherly African-American woman, then cutting to shots of customers of various races and ethnicities, including an apparently Jewish family gathered around a hanukkiah, and at least two different interracial couples. In 60 seconds, we see individuals who seem to be White, Black, East Asian, and Latino (and one sentient sea sponge) celebrating at least two different winter holidays and speaking two different languages (inglés y español). This clever brand strategy marketing makes Walmart seem approachable, not alienating. Customers can see themselves reflected in the ad. As I will discuss below, the ad includes clips from movies and TV shows, most of which feature white actors, and Walmart seems to have included more people of color in the other parts of the ad in order to balance this out. On the whole, therefore, Walmart carefully includes a diversity of individuals, taking care not to alienate any consumers.
Another set of details in the 60-second spot are the depictions of gift-giving, notably including many pop culture references. Both the gifts themselves and the references are accessible and aspirational. In the ad, we see clips of our favorite movie and TV characters giving gifts, interspersed with new footage created by Walmart specifically for the ad. The gifts vary in price. Perhaps the most expensive exchange we see is Molly Ringwald giving away her diamond earring in The Breakfast Club, but the gift that gets the biggest reaction is a puffy metallic vest available online for $14.98. The varied price points of the gifts, along with the positive responses, reaffirm Walmart’s brand strategy marketing message: it’s the thought that counts. As Walmart’s VP of Creative put it in an interview with MarketingDive:
“We have the gifts they’re looking for and they’re at the price that they’re looking for as well.”
The pop culture references serve a similar purpose: many of the scenes depict middle-class Americans. We see clips from the Simpsons, the Gilmore Girls, National Lampoon, and SpongeBob. Furthermore, the interiors in the original video created by Walmart are not picture-perfect: behind the actors giving and receiving Walmart gifts, we see a picture hung slightly askew, a garland somewhat off-center. We see family joy, it seems, not unreachable holiday perfection. Again, by depicting relatable scenes, Walmart doubles down on its brand strategy marketing.
Brand Strategy Marketing with Gilmore Girls
One especially great example of being accessible yet aspirational is the choice to partner with the Gilmore Girls franchise. Gilmore Girls is a show about daughter Rory and single mom Lorelai, who grew up very wealthy but left that world behind due to a teen pregnancy. In episode 1, viewers find Lorelari working as the manager of an inn, having started as a maid. She is raising Rory, who will need her grandparents’ financial support if she is to attend the private school that will help her get into the college of her dreams. Lorelai and Rory have some access to the glamour and opportunities of wealth, and yet they remain in a lower tax-bracket, so their lifestyle is aspirational without being too alienating.
All of this backstory makes Walmart’s choice to extend their partnership with Gilmore Girls into an additional ad and even more promotional content into especially canny brand strategy marketing. Earlier this month, Walmart released a 30-second spot featuring Lorelai and the man she eventually marries, Luke, along with their neighbor Kirk, known for his odd jobs (cast here as the Walmart delivery man). Kirk delivers a big blue box — Luke has ordered a Keurig for Lorelai from Walmart online (here, as in the original ad, Walmart is showcasing ecommerce, demonstrating that they have the same convenient delivery as online-only retailers like Amazon in order to promote the retailer’s growing ecommerce business). Lorelai demands coffee from Luke, who owns the town diner, and in response Luke produces the blue Walmart box. Out pops the Keurig (available online from Walmart for $98 with free shipping). Cut to a shot of Luke and Lorelai standing outside, gazing at the gently falling snow.
This brand strategy marketing choice has a number of upsides. First, partnering with a nostalgic series (now off the air) seems to have resulted in consumers voluntarily watching the commercial: one Youtube commenter writes,
“The Walmart team is a genius. I’ve re-watched this so many times.”
Second, the ad provided an opportunity for a lot of product placement: People and Cosmopolitan have both published articles on how to shop for the clothing showcased in the ad. Third, by choosing to showcase Gilmore Girls and Lorelai in particular, Walmart appeals to single mothers and anyone who can relate to the story of the Gilmore Girls. The partnership sends the message that Walmart affords normal people the opportunity to give nice gifts at a good price point.
Ambient Room Videos: Brand Strategy Marketing for Atmosphere
Walmart’s brand strategy marketing choice to partner with Gilmore Girls did not end with the 30-second commercial, however. On December 3, 2024, Walmart published four “Ambient Rooms” to its Youtube channel. Walmart’s Ambient Rooms could be the topic of their own blog post. They seem to be an attempt to mimic streaming channels like Lofi Girl, a Youtube giant known for streaming relaxing instrumental music intended to accompany studying or reading. At the moment I write this article, Lofi Girl has 14.7 million subscribers, and across the channel’s 10 live “radio” videos, there are 59,000 people currently watching. Lofi Girl’s most popular video at the moment, aside from its original “lofi hip hop radio” is its “christmas lofi radio,” and perhaps this explains the holiday theming of Walmart’s four Ambient Rooms, which include titles like “The Reindeer Flight” and “The Technicolor Holiday Party.”
But we’re discussing Walmart’s collaboration with Gilmore Girls, so let’s focus on “Christmas at Luke’s Diner.” Like all four Ambient Room videos, “Christmas at Luke’s Diner” is an approximately 30-minute video playing ambient music and thematically appropriate background noise, in this case sounds we might expect to hear in a diner. The video also includes images of a variety of Walmart products available for purchase online, at prices ranging from $5.98 to $169. Some products are Gilmore Girls-themed merchandise, but the plain blue hat Luke wears in the ad and a different, more expensive Keurig are also tagged. The video description reads:
“Welcome to Christmas at Luke’s Diner. An ambient room experience full of fan favorite easter eggs, soothing music inspired by the Gilmore Girls soundtrack, and classic diner ASMR. This room is for those whose comfort show is Gilmore Girls. Tune in, vibe out & shop some of the greatest Gilmore inspired gifts, and decor from Walmart.”
The description also includes a link to a “Luke’s Diner” shop on the Walmart website, full of even more Gilmore Girls merchandise, plus clothing and decor featured in the 30-second ad.
Walmart & Small-Town Americana: Brand Strategy Marketing at its Most Aspirational
Walmart has chosen to dive deep into partnership with Gilmore Girls, and we can see why this makes sense from the perspective of their accessible yet aspirational brand strategy marketing, given the unique economic position of characters like Lorelai. Even the choice to narrow in on Luke’s Diner as both the setting of the 30-second ad and the longer Ambient Room fits into this framework. Luke is an ordinary townsperson of Stars Hollow (the fictional New England town in which Lorelai and Rory live). We can see in the background images of “Christmas at Luke’s Diner” that he is charging $4.75 for an omelette. I live in New England, and I can tell you it’s implausible that a pleasant, clean diner like Luke’s would sell an omelette these days for under $5. But that is the magic of Luke and the magic of Stars Hollow. Stars Hollow, too, is aspirational without being unrelatable: the town is bucolic and friendly, comfortable but not especially wealthy. It is an idealized image of small-town America.
With all of these details, Walmart reinforces its brand strategy marketing. By shopping at Walmart, the consumer learns, you don’t need to pay much to give gifts that demonstrate you understand the recipient. You too can live in a world like Stars Hollow: nice but not pricey.
To leave you with a final (slightly different) observation about Walmart’s brand strategy marketing, we might say a word about how the message of the ad fits in not just with Walmart’s identity as a value brand, but also with the individualistic culture of the US. Though Walmart is a global brand, almost half of all Walmart retail stores are in the United States. The “Give the Gifts that Show You Get Them” campaign seems to appeal to expressive individualism of a sort (NB: though expressive individualism is typically a term of critique on the left and right, it has been praised, and here I use it in a simply descriptive fashion, to mean a worldview in which the expression and celebration of individual identities is highly valued). The idea seems to be that a gift can demonstrate the giver’s understanding of the recipient’s individuality, and allow the recipient to express that identity, perfect for a society which values expressive individualism, like the United States. I include this parting thought to demonstrate the breadth of Walmart’s brand strategy marketing in this campaign.
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