The “Product Placement Show” Is Inevitable. Maybe That’s Okay?

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A few days after Thanksgiving, Walmart released Add to Heart, a Christmas special chopped into 23 very short episodes that ran on TikTok and YouTube and featured more than 330 shoppable products. The show didn’t make a critical impression because it wasn’t very good, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t very interesting. In fact, Add to Heart presented a potentially viable model for product placement, which is in a state of crisis even though it has been common practice since the French filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière found a way to get Sunlight Soap in a shot in 1896.

Product placement can work. The Ray-Ban Wayfarer is nowhere without Risky Business. But just because it can work doesn’t mean it works consistently. Companies continue to spend money on TV product placement — one study from last year found that spending on product placement has grown 170% in the past 10 years — but research indicates that placements now translate to fewer actual purchases. Making shows shoppable and putting products one click away could change that. And, from a UX perspective, it’s not that complicated.

The problem, of course, is that there’s not a massive appetite for 23-episode infomercials. Except, according to Darren Campo, SVP of Programming Strategy at Food Network and the Cooking Channel, there might be. 

“Even if Add to Heart is a money loser, Walmart should continue to make movies and entertainment content to sell products,” says Campo. “As long as the product placement doesn’t diminish the story quality — which, for rom-coms, can be very low and still be watchable — then Walmart can ‘Hallmark’ their sales with seasonal content.”

In fact, Campo says Walmart should probably go ahead and just buy Hallmark. He describes the network as a “turnkey” solution for selling products. The idea would be to take a cutesy marketing play and turn it into a platform that could compete with Amazon seasonally while leaning into vertical integration. Add to Heart was not exactly Citizen Kane, but was no worse than much of what Hallmark puts out. If the placements distracted from the plot, they added an interesting bit of gamification.

“Overall, we’re moving back to the days of soap operas, where content is going to have to do more work selling products in-show,” Campo adds.

Given that an emphasis on products is inevitable and the corporate pursuit of synergies cannot be stopped, Add to Heart feels a bit more like a trial balloon than a holiday special. Why couldn’t Walmart put out something like Superstore, which is genuinely good and very… product-ful? Someone at corporate HQ is asking that question.

Some notes on Add to Heart, which SPY did actually watch: