Walmart Shoutout Black and Unlimited at Broccoli City

Building a successful business is far from easy, but the barriers BIPOC entrepreneurs face are exponentially more challenging. A 2024 survey found that 86 percent of Black small business owners are concerned about access to capital — many of which are likely to apply for new loans or lines of credit while less likely to receive the full amount requested. When met with significant funding obstacles, growth becomes a hard-won feat. So, how do Black-owned businesses grow? One tried-and-true method: word-of-mouth.

Even in a digital world, where visibility typically means strategizing to gain exposure via online promotion and social media, word-of-mouth marketing can hold a lot of power. In fact, it’s how many Black-owned businesses thrive. According to a survey conducted by Dynata in 2021, 42 percent of those surveyed said they learned about Black-owned businesses by word-of-mouth. This is essentially the basis for Walmart’s Black & Unlimited: The Shoutout.

The Shoutout is the newest extension of Walmart’s long-standing Black & Unlimited platform, which is all about spreading the love, proving that personal recommendations hold untapped power. Since its inception, Black & Unlimited has supported events like the Something in the Water Festival, hosted a creators’ tour across HBCUs, and spotlighted Black fatherhood in partnership with the American Black Film Festival. More recently, the Shoutout landed at Washington D.C.’s Broccoli City, a two-day festival celebrating music, culture, and community, which hosted over 35,000 attendees in 2023. No better place to get the word out about brands that deserve their flowers. Last weekend, Walmart turned the volume all the way up on its megaphone, utilizing its own interactive Shoutout activations at the festival to spotlight Black ingenuity and entrepreneurship.

The Shoutout greeted guests right as they entered Audi Field with a countertop design bar offering festival goers the opportunity to make T-shirts adorned with artwork designed by Black artists Chindo Nkenke-Smith and Ceej Vega, who also collaborated on the artwork lining the walls featuring shoutouts for brand founders like Melissa Butler of The Lip Bar, Denise Woodard of Partake Foods, and Shontay Lundy of Black Girl Sunscreen.

But people can’t give a brand a shoutout without actually trying the product, so attendees were gifted samples of products sold in Walmart throughout the day, which they could test and use on the spot, including Black Girl Sunscreen Broad Spectrum Kids Lotion, The Shop Face Wash and Face Lotion, and a KAZMALEJE Kurls Plus Wide Tooth Pick Hair Comb.

Walmart Black & Unlimited: The Shoutout tour will continue through the fall to spread the word, so everyone can discover its lineup of Black-led brands and experience their favorite Black business and creators. With hundreds of thousands of people reached on this tour, this level of exposure will continue to increase the discoverability and impactful cycle of word-of-mouth marketing, keeping the megaphone projecting and Black businesses growing and thriving. In other words, Walmart isn’t in the business of gatekeeping this summer. Now, pass it on.

More details on tour stops can be found at the Shoutout.