PayPal: Case study

Credits & Description:

AGENCY: CP+B / Los Angeles + Plus Productions / Santa Monica
CLIENT: PayPal
ART DIRECTOR: Christine Ramsay Leri / Victor Roa
WRITER: Alex Lee / Gregg Kaysen
CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER: Kevin Jones
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Sabina Hesse
DESIGNER: Goran Krstic / Thao Le
PRODUCTION COMPANY:
Plus Productions / Santa Monica
Haus / Los Angeles
Brick City / Miami
DIRECTOR: Mike Immerman / Ryan Simpson
PRODUCER: Yoav Attias / Theresa Radke / John McGarthy / Tom Galup
AGENCY PRODUCER: Ryan Moreno / Matthew Kahn / Benjamin Kahn / Becca Manning / Paul Muhlbach
CONTENT STRATEGIST: David Irons / Ryan Skubic / Laura Stayt / Charissa Kinney / Jackie Schultz / Alex Safransky / Paige Poulsen / Fio Juarez / Mollie Partesotti / Leigh Davidson / Lani Tuitasi / Rebecca Williams / Tana Prosper / Julie Bolster
CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIST: Anthony Chavez
EDITOR: Alvaro Santos
MEDIA COMPANY: Noble People / Los Angeles
MUSIC & SOUND: Andy Hamm
PHOTOGRAPHER: Guy Mossman
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER: Jessica Rudis
TAGS: BANKING / FINANCIAL SERVICES / INSURANCE / INVESTMENT
Synopsis
Despite PayPal's high awareness and 210 million active users, less than 10% actually choose PayPal at checkout. This staggering performance metric reflects the brand's increasing irrelevance to the modern-day shopper.
Additionally, PayPal's consumer base amongst millennials was decreasing steadily. Selecting PayPal in a world of Apple Pay and Venmo had become a quaint and outdated choice.
The challenge became clear: We needed to engage with and reinvent ourselves for a new generation of online shoppers and get them to choose PayPal at checkout. Our ambition was to take a brand that is known by many as the "eBay button," and prove just how powerful PayPal is. Metric objectives included an increase in PayPal transactions and PayPal account sign-ups.

Strategy
Strategic development included a dive into online shopping behaviors using consumer and category data tools. We found that for this new generation of shoppers, Pinterest boards and YouTube influencers have become the new classifieds and infomercials. Comparing products used to be a chore - a necessity before making a purchase. Now, shoppers enjoy the hours of collecting inspiration and exploring all of the possibilities before buying.
Our key insight: the search has become just as gratifying as the purchase itself.
We saw a way for PayPal to add value at this stage of the shopper journey in a way our direct competitors couldn't. Because PayPal is utilized on millions of sites across the globe, they have a large network of merchant partners. The opportunity was in leveraging this existing network and connecting them to online shoppers in an interesting way as shoppers search and find new products online.

Outcome
Local Selects exceeded our initial objectives and goals, yielding 250,000+ transactions, 590,000 livestreams and over 21,000 PayPal sign-ups. With such a high number of transactions and sign-ups, we were able to validate Local Selects' ability to drive PayPal purchases and reflect a PayPal win at checkout. Our featured merchants also saw incredible success and spikes in transactions, with one even getting a 31% spike in PayPal transactions as compared to a usual day. Lastly, and most unexpectedly, Local Selects also yielded a spike in PayPal merchant sign-ups. This showed us an opportunity to also use Local Selects as a tool for onboarding new PayPal merchants and a great way to spotlight up-and-coming small merchants.
Overall, Local Selects was both a business and creative success by giving PayPal a repeatable and scalable way to successfully connect modern online shoppers with small merchants across the globe.

Execution
Local Selects LA took place in June while Local Selects NY and Australia took place in December for the holidays. While viewers can still shop the microsite today, the Facebook and microsite livestream were only implemented for three hours on selected days in order to shop with our hosts in real time. Our flexible tool accommodated pre- and post-event tailored content, layout and functionality. As the host held up an item during the livestream, our site displayed the product details and purchase options in real time. For the mobile site, we incorporated the livestream video into every page, so it would remain visible even when the user navigated to another page. While this type of in-page video on mobile is common in native apps, we were uniquely able to translate that functionality to a mobile web platform. Local Selects gained traffic around the world, proving its global reach.

Campaign Description
We thought: What if we could help people shop places usually only accessible by foot? So, we created PayPal's Local Selects - a livestream shopping experience where customers are virtually transported to the world's coolest markets to discover and buy unique items in real time. Through our livestream and custom Local Selects microsite, we took viewers around the world from LA and NYC to Sydney.

With style expert Leandra Medine of famous Man Repeller blog and comedian Matt Okine leading the way, shoppers could discover new products and merchants in a fun way. As an item was held up, the Local Selects site displayed the product details and purchase options in real time so online shoppers could instantly buy items they loved. The Local Selects livestream gave online shoppers access to unique products they may have otherwise never known existed - all with seamless checkout with PayPal at the end.