The Amazing Spider-Man Swings Into Wal-Mart

Look out, Wal-Mart shoppers: Here comes Spider-Man.

Wal-Mart, Sony Pictures, and Marvel Studios have teamed up for an extensive interactive marketing campaign in advance of the new super-spider motion picture's July 3 release. The free Spider-Man Web-Slinger app for iOS and Android went live Wednesday, with the application's various features slowly rolling out.

The first available element works in conjunction with the Amazing Spider-Man Truck Tour, dubbed "Secrets Unmasked," which deployed a caravan of 20 trucks to more than 1,000 Wal-Mart stores this week. Anyone with a smartphone or iPad can simply point their device toward the truck's banner and watch an animated battle between Peter Parker's Spider-Man and his most recent nemesis the Lizard, all playing out in augmented reality on top of the truck.

To find out if the truck is coming to your nearby Wal-Mart, enter your ZIP code on see.walmart.com/spider-man/.

A gaming center, movie-tie-in toys, and representatives from Wal-Mart's Straight Talk mobile service will be available in participating store parking lots through July 15, according to Brent Duwe, Wal-Mart director of Engineering Property Merchandising.

The campaign's next component will be revealed in an app update next week, when Spider-Man visits Wal-Mart stores, sort of.

On June 15 and 16, the superstore will host a worldwide premiere event, inviting Spidey fans to visit Wal-Marts across the country at 12:01 a.m. (for the hardcore fan, Duwe said), 10 a.m., 3 p.m. or 8 p.m. for a sneak peek at the film. DVDs with the movie clip, as well as behind-the-scenes features, will be on sale for $2.96, as well as copies of the comic book that first featured the Lizard (as seen in the above photo).

Don't forget your smartphone during your visit, or you may miss a photo op with your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

Similar to the Truck Tour's interactive banner, in-store displays bring the masked vigilante to life on your phone or tablet screen. With the app's built-in camera feature, anyone can pose for a photo with Spidey, and send it to family and friends.

Duwe called the joint campaign a big deal, since a studio has never partnered with a worldwide retailer like Wal-Mart before.

When Marvel's The Avengers hit theaters this spring, the mega-chain created a less tech-savvy, static-image campaign, to which Duwe said customers responded well. For this summer's tent-pole Spider-Man film, the store took things up a notch, building a lengthy campaign around the superhero hype.

The final pieces of the app puzzle will be spun out on June 26, when the Web-shooter game is unveiled via a scavenger-hunt-like trek through Wal-Mart, where users will find different displays in various sections of the store.

"We wanted to give fans access and experiences they wouldn't otherwise have," Duwe said about the ongoing program. "We want (people) to think of Wal-Mart when they think of Spider-Man," he said.

Also on June 26, Activision's The Amazing Spider-Man game will hit shelves, available for all game consoles and PC.

Through what Duwe called "retail-tainment," Wal-Mart is always looking for activities to engage customers, so it is likely that the store chain will build upon future film, television, and other entertainment to drive customers, just not necessarily on the same scope and scale as this one, he said.

"The Amazing Spider-Man," starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Rhys Ifans, comes to theaters worldwide and IMAX 3D on July 3.