Walmart, OZY Media Partner to Help Young Black Entrepreneurs

Burgeoning multimedia news platform OZY Media maintains a stable of impressive partnerships between its growing digital presence and the popular (and expanding) outdoor OZY Fest. Now, the outlet is teaming up with a major conglomerate to tell inclusive stories: Walmart. The pair has announced a multi-year partnership that, per a recent press release, "will focus on storytelling centered around the themes of Black entrepreneurship, diverse talent development and sustainability & regeneration." Much like the recent addition of partner TikTok, this collaboration emphasizes the media platform's growing influence. We're excited to help propel and support a diverse generation that's going to be entering into the workforce, society and culture.Jill Toscano, vp and head of media at Walmart “This is a tremendously exciting collaboration with Walmart,” said Carlos Watson, CEO and co-founder of OZY Media, in a statement. “Building on the back of a test in Q1 where our results substantially exceeded expectations based on the power of our newsletter franchise to engage diverse and curious audiences, we’re thrilled to be able to scale the depth and breadth of reach for these important topics with such an innovative and creative thought partner like Walmart.” Face to face with the future The new deal will be a multimedia effort as OZY and Walmart collaborate on a number of branded events, including a town hall-style discussion at HBCU North Carolina A&T this fall that will focus on Black entrepreneurship, opportunity and growth. "I think going on the campus is such a powerful, dynamic opportunity," Watson told Adweek. "Not simply recruiting, but actually engaging students in opportunity, teaching, learning and then taking the best of that and amplifying that elsewhere. We haven't done that before, and as the son of a Virginia Union grad and the grandson of a Tougaloo grad, I think it is going to be really powerful and distinctive." Walmart will also help facilitate the OZY Genius Awards, which will grant 10 college-age students up to $10,000 to pursue their entrepreneurial ideas. For Jill Toscano, vp and head of media at Walmart, the effort is an opportunity for the brand to take part in the growth of future Black business leaders. "We're excited to help propel and support a diverse generation who's going to be entering into the workforce, society and culture," she says. "And we want to support those really fresh and creative ideas that are coming from the universities and colleges." Walmart will also take part in this October's OZY Fest in Miami, the digital Carlos Watson Show, and hopes to expand the partnership to in-store activations in the future. A leap of faith For a legacy brand like Walmart, entrusting its presence in such vital discussions like DEI and sustainability with a newer name like OZY could be considered a great risk. However, Toscano said that her faith in OZY Media's ability to carry out its mission for a brighter, more equitable future lies in her own experiences with the rising platform. "I am a reader of the OZY newsletter," she informed Adweek. "I got to see the quality content and the narratives that he was sharing within those newsletters. I got a sense of the care for the personalization that OZY was trying to deliver to its audience." "I always tell my team that our best partners are the ones who trust us in a very personal way, whether they read, listen to or watch us," Watson added. "I would love if over time, Walmart was able to say that they took a chance on OZY and that we not only met the grade, but were also a pace-setter that brought creative ideas to the table." OZY Fest Returns with Title Partner TikTok, Expands to Miami

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Walmart and OZY Media Partner To Propel Stories of Black Entrepreneurship, Sustainability

The legacy retailer teams with an emerging media platform to connect with a growing generation

Shannon Miller

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Shannon Miller