BACKGROUND

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. Choosing PayPal in a world of Apple Pay and Venmo had become a quaint and outdated decision. Paying has increasingly become a social activity and in a social setting which captures much of a consumer’s spent attention.   

 

The challenge became clear: We needed to engage 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 “the eBay button,” and prove just how powerful PayPal is. Metric objectives included an increase in PayPal transactions and PayPal account sign ups. 

 

CREATIVE IDEA

We thought: what if we could let 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 Australia.

 

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 new, unique products they may have otherwise never known existed – all with a seamless checkout with PayPal at the end.

 

STRATEGY

Strategic development included a dive into online shopping behaviors using consumer and category data tools. What caught our interest is 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 to shoppers naturally in a social space they’re already existing.  

 

EXECUTION

Local Selects LA took place in June while Local Selects NY and AUS took place in December for the holidays. While viewers can still shop the microsite today, the Facebook and microsite live stream were only implemented for 3 hours on selects 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 live-stream 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.

 

RESULTS

Local Selects exceeded our initial objectives and goals yielding 250,000+ transactions, 590,00 live streams, 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 repeatable and scalable way to successfully connect modern online shoppers with small merchants across the globe.