Walmart Free Skate

00 — The Brief
Walmart wanted to connect with Gen-Z students heading back to school, but traditional retail marketing wasn't going to cut it. The brief: create a branded experience that felt more like a party than a promotion. Something students would actually show up to, post about, and remember.

The answer was Free Skate. A series of roller rink takeovers across six cities, blending 80s nostalgia with beauty brand activations, photo moments, and free swag. I created the brand identity from scratch and art directed a team to produce 500+ assets that brought the campaign to life across social, print, environmental, and digital touchpoints.

01 — Exploration
“Free Skate” captures the open-session moment at a roller rink, when the rope drops and the floor fills. The identity could lean in multiple stylistic directions, so three preliminary concepts were developed. I designed two of the three we shared with the client, both drawing from retro roller-rink culture and bold 80s design language. Each direction was presented with mood boards and early logo explorations to establish the right tone.

02 — The Identity
The client loved the world of Direction C. The energy, the color, the retro attitude, but felt the logo itself could be pushed further. The ask was to simplify the primary mark so it could hold its own at any scale, and let the more illustrative, detailed design pieces become supporting elements in the system rather than competing with the wordmark.

That tension, bold simplicity up front, rich detail in the surrounding system, ended up defining the whole identity. The final logo is clean and kinetic enough to work on a 20-foot venue banner or a 44px Instagram avatar, while the secondary graphics carry the full roller-culture personality across touchpoints.

03 — The Campaign
From the identity, we built an entire campaign ecosystem: 500+ assets spanning social content, digital ads, promotional materials, and environmental graphics for all six venues. The system needed to flex across formats while keeping the energy consistent, whether it was a 9:16 Instagram Story or a 20-foot venue banner.

03a — Digital

03b — Print

03c — Venue Signage

03d — Stickers and Vinyl

03e — Photo Booth Visuals

03f — Venue Mockups

04 — Six Cities
Each event was a private roller rink takeover with beauty brand stations, photo-worthy activations, and $50 Walmart gift cards. The tour hit six cities before culminating in an Atlanta finale headlined by a live-streamed Willow Smith performance, extending the campaign's reach well beyond the rink walls.

The Atlanta finale featured a live performance by Willow Smith, streamed to audiences beyond the rink, turning a local activation into a national moment.

05 — Results
What started as a back-to-school retail play became one of Walmart's most talked-about Gen-Z activations of the year. The live-streamed Atlanta finale alone pulled nearly 800K concurrent views, and the campaign content generated millions of impressions across social platforms.

6
Cities

500+
Assets Produced

3.5M
Total Social Plays

5M
Social Streams

781K
Live Plays

2.7M
VOD Plays