PayPal Opens Next Chapter with a Little Help from Will Ferrell and Fleetwood Mac

A Fleetwood Mac banger and one of the world’s most popular comedy actors - PayPal isn’t messing about with its new campaign. It has been evolving and it wants to make sure that we all know it.

Debuting nationally across the United States today, the 'PayPal Everywhere' campaign stars Will Ferrell dancing and singing his lungs out to ‘Everywhere’ as he uses the PayPal debit card to shop and earn rewards. It’s PayPal’s biggest US push ever and the team behind it hopes that it will help audiences to understand that PayPal can allow them to do so much more than pay online.

The campaign was created by BBH, with some input from Publicis Groupe stablemates Le Truc and the hero film was directed by Jake Szymanski and Payman Benz at Gifted Youth, with post production from Harbour and editorial at The Den.

According to Geoff Seeley, chief marketing officer at PayPal, the time was ripe to showcase its evolution on a grand scale.

“This is our most ambitious campaign yet as we reintroduce PayPal to a global audience. While many recognise us as 'the checkout button', PayPal offers so much more. We believe PayPal is the smartest solution for paying, sending, and saving money,” says Geoff. “As one of the world's most trusted and valuable brands, we're investing at a scale that reflects our reputation, with a marketing push that’s bold, fun, and larger-than-life. This campaign highlights our latest innovation, which brings the benefits of PayPal into the offline world—offering users amazing rewards for doing so.”

And this is just the start. As Geoff explains, alongside the new campaign, there’s also a fresh visual identity which the team says will signal to both customers and merchants that use the platform that there’s a ‘new and exciting direction’.

Strategically, the team had a very clear starting point when it came to developing the campaign. “That we’re more than a button!” laughs Geoff. “PayPal has – for more than 20 years now – revolutionised the way we pay, send and save money online. And now we’re taking all that goodness and enabling an even greater and more rewarding offline experience for customers.”

This campaign zeros in on the PayPal debit card, its cashback rewards and the ease of adding it to one’s mobile wallet, but it does also reflect the wide-ranging transformation that PayPal has undergone, explains Geoff. It also sets the scene for more to come in the year ahead.

“We have a compelling value proposition, one that is grounded in truth, that PayPal is the smartest way to pay, send and save money. We have so many incredible products and features already in-market – like Fastlane - and in development for ‘25. This campaign allows us to tell the first chapter of the new PayPal.”

The partnership with Will Ferrell also allows PayPal to get its personality across on the biggest scale possible - and it’s a cheeky bonus that the brand’s new spokesperson just so happens to have a huge connection with Christmas thanks to his star turn in Elf. After all, with the pre-holiday shopping period about to begin in earnest, it’s a good time to get shoppers thinking about how they intend to buy.

From Geoff’s perspective, Will Ferrell’s popular charm was irresistible. “There are few people who have the appeal and tone to represent PayPal – Will is the talent who represents everything our brand is. He’s iconic, he’s accessible for everyone, and he has mass appeal,” he says.

Not only did they find the perfect spokesperson in Will Ferrell, the team also found the perfect banger. Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Everywhere’ is unavoidably catchy and, lyrically, captured exactly what the team wanted to communicate.

“Recreating the iconic Fleetwood Mac song and giving it a fun twist really echoes exactly what we want our customers to know—PayPal is with you everywhere,” says Geoff. “Music is one of the most powerful tools when it comes to marketing, particularly when you can tap into both nostalgia and zeitgeist. Fleetwood Mac are influencing a huge amount of today’s new artists and we feel we’ve got a real ear-worm with this one.”

As the biggest US campaign to date, there is, of course, so much more to it than just the hero TVC, which will be showing up on network TV. The media strategy echoes the ‘PayPal Everywhere’ theme, and customers will see the brand pop up, well, everywhere. Spanning out-of-home ads, digital media, retail media, streaming services, radio, podcasts, influencers, and social media, the team hopes this campaign will be unmissable.

For Geoff, who has been in his role at PayPal since February this year, and the wider marketing team, it’s been enormously satisfying to give a brand that has been a pioneer in digital payment for over two decades a new lease of life. “We’ve given one of the most recognised, iconic and pioneering brands new energy and a reason to invite hundreds of millions of customers to engage or reengage with us,” says Geoff.