In the US, the Friday after Thanksgiving – “Black Friday” – marks the kickoff of the holiday shopping season with massive retail sales events. But when the pandemic drove shoppers out of stores and to the Internet, the rules changed. Retailers now offer different deals on different days, driving confusion and chaos in an already crowded season. 

Our goal? Announce and drive excitement for Walmart’s big deal days – Wednesdays – during the Black Friday season. We needed a new creative idea that was extremely memorable and could extend all November long, with at least 5 unique media placements launching every week to support new deal reveals.

So for Walmart to own Wednesdays, we reunited pop culture’s favorite clique who first made Wednesdays historic: the cast of Mean Girls. 

It was The Plastics who first famously said, “On Wednesdays, we wear pink.” So we turned their mantra into “On Wednesdays, we shop deals,” and brought all the fan-favorite characters back. We continued their 2004 stories into 2023 to earn the Internet’s attention, with Walmart deals naturally integrated into their lives. 

The campaign was built on the starpower of the celebrity talent, and the influence of their massive fan bases. Knowing fans practically worshiped the characters of Cady, Gretchen, Karen, and Damian (and the actors who portrayed them), and would thus go wild for new content in the Mean Girls cinematic universe, we reunited the celebrity cast to craft an Internet-breaking series of character stories to ignite the flames of fandom across social media. 

We crafted stories that showed fans where their favorite characters ended up, filled with callbacks and catchphrases, and fit Walmart products naturally into their lives. In partnership with our celebrity talent, we made sure to spread it across the Internet to all their fans and followers. 

Starting Wednesday, November 1st, each celebrity partner launched their character’s “episode” in collab posts on Instagram with Walmart social channels, driving brand messaging to their millions of followers. Talent engaged with followers and fellow cast members while staying in character, and reposted fan love, shared additional behind-the-scenes content, and hinted at upcoming spots with teaser trailers. 

Four unique spots launched every Wednesday to drive the “On Wednesdays, we shop deals” messaging and announce new deals all month long, with a fifth spot launching on Cyber Monday. Spots also ran on YouTube’s homepage for 24 hours, and in TikTok, Instagram, TV, and cinema placements. 

Every week, fans tuned in to Walmart and celebrity social channels, engaging with the brand, celebrity talent and fellow fans, anxiously waiting to see what Cady, Gretchen, Karen, and Damian would do next. 

While Walmart sales data is highly confidential and therefore not shared externally, our campaign broke brand records in awareness, earned press, shopping intent, and engagement – all critical objectives to assess our breakthrough. 

Walmart became the #1 Black Friday retailer for ad awareness and brand consideration, achieving both objectives. 

The campaign also led to results unprecedented for Walmart, including: 

3 billion total impressions & views online 

66x more conversations about Walmart Black Friday than 2022

400x higher user engagement than 2022

90% positive social sentiment 

Average clickthrough rate 63% above benchmark

@walmart’s highest performing Instagram and TikTok posts ever

With thousands of user-generated fan edits and reaction videos, the movie fandom deemed our campaign “the Mean Girls sequel we deserved” and actor Amanda Seyfried (Karen herself!) commented “This is better than a sequel.” Thousands commented about shopping intent, and thousands more identified as first-time Walmart customers due to the campaign.