CREATIVE DIRECTOR & PROJECT LEAD
VERSION YOU
A Campaign Strategy for Walmart’s Next Generation of Shoppers
Who knew Walmart could be the place where you craft your next identity? We’re going to show you how affordability and self-expression aren’t just compatible, they’re inseparable for a new generation.
THE PROBLEM
Walmart has a perception problem.
It’s known for affordability, but not for style.
For Gen Z, that’s a major disconnect.
If a brand isn’t helping them express who they are, it’s not even considered.
AUDIENCE
They are 18 to 24, navigating identity and independence.
They are budget-conscious but highly trend-aware.
They build identity through iteration and constant change.
Key Insight
“This insight is grounded in a real economic shift.
College tuition has increased over 200% in the past few decades, and today, students are paying anywhere from $30,000 to over $60,000 a year.
Because of that, more students are making financially conscious decisions — like staying home or choosing more affordable living situations.
So their everyday environment — their room, their setup, their style — becomes much more important, because it’s where their identity lives. At the same time, Gen Z still sees style as identity. Perception matters, especially online.
But they don’t want to spend a lot to express themselves.So the tension is: they want to build who they are, but within real financial limits.They’re not chasing luxury — they’re looking for accessible ways to create identity on their own terms.”
This shifts what Walmart needs to do as a brand.
First, it’s a perception shift from ‘cheap’ to ‘creative.’
Second, it drives Gen Z engagement through content, sharing, and community.
Third, it creates real sales impact especially in fashion, tech, and lifestyle because we’re encouraging bundled purchases and continuous upgrades.
Walmart already has the reach, the products, and the price point. What it needs is a new story, one where affordability and identity are the same thing. Because Walmart doesn’t need to compete on price anymore it needs to compete on relevance.
OUR BIG IDEA
VERSION YOU
Imagine this: our audience isn’t just shopping; they’re actively building versions of themselves — Version 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 — as they evolve. This taps into their digital-native mindset, where personal evolution and iteration are a natural part of life.
With ‘Version You.,’ every purchase at Walmart becomes an integral part of that personal system. Each item isn’t just bought; it’s an upgrade that unlocks a new version of themselves. This creates a continuous, engaging journey of self-discovery and refinement.
Ultimately, this campaign transforms Walmart from being merely a store into something far more profound: a platform for identity. We become the indispensable partner in their ongoing journey of self-expression and personal growth.
As you can see on the slide, this concept is supported by key pillars like ‘Upgrade Unlocked,’ ‘Grab & Go Kits,’ and the ‘$100 Identity Challenge,’ all designed to bring this vision to life and empower Gen Z to truly own their narrative with Walmart.
Moodboard
Walmart’s core is accessible, warm, and affordable. It meets Gen Z’s world of identity, aesthetics, and tech. Visually, this is a system. Clean, modular, and buildable. Identity is something you construct and evolve.
We followed Walmart’s brand guidelines and built and identity kit using AI
The idea expands across social, in-store, digital, and community. Each touchpoint allows Gen Z to explore and express identity.
Campaign assets were generated from AI – ChatGPT, gemini, Claude.
The Campaign in Action
USER INTERFACE | APP DEVELOPMENT | AI POWERED WORKFLOW
AI Powered Workflow
We have created an awesome theme that will help designers, developers and companies create websites for their startups quickly and easily.
How AI Shaped Our Process
Throughout our campaign, we explored how AI could support us.
We treated AI as a fellow team member, using it to help us find and sort through data research, understand our audience, and test ideas in a relatively short amount of time. Each week the team would share what their experience was like using AI whether that be creating personas to judge the top 4 concepts we came up with, or weighing the impact of our taglines to our target audience, or image generations, but in the end, we made the final decisions. We decided what was missing or being overlooked.
We used AI to check in and make sure we were on track, but every final decision was human.
When it came to prompting images, mock-ups, and our campaign, we focused on Walmart’s visual direction to be our centerhold. This allowed us to come up with more cohesive visuals, whether that be a dorm identity transformation, omnichannel campus experience, or bundle-based styling. Overall we were building a system where a prompt could reach multiple touchpoint whether that be the app, in store or an experience.
AI allowed us to work fast and flexibly.
It gave us speed, scale, and personalization. We could get feedback on our ideas from our Gen Z, Walmart Skeptics, Amazon loyalist, Fashion leaders within minutes. With our omnichannel platform, AI gave us a way to test our concepts like our App/Website system and explore how it would look, and make tweaks. AI helped us prototype what a “stylish” Walmart could look like and gave us a lot of versions of how walmart could be “stylish” we chose this one as it felt most on brand with Walmart, their concept of “who knew”, and felt real.
APP USER INTERFACE
We started by creating our synthetic personas to understand who we were designing for, then mapped the full user journey from discovery to conversion. From there, we translated our ideas into a paper wireframe and used ChatGPT to turn it into an interactive prototype, allowing us to quickly visualize, test, and refine the “Version You” experience in a more real and usable way.
