PayPal historically dominated the Online Payments category in Australia, with over 9m Australians having a PayPal account. As a highly trusted financial brand in Australia, PayPal wanted to hero-in on PayPal Pay in 4 – its new Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) product.

We helped PayPal maintain its leading position in the market - and now entering the BNPL space - with an awareness and consideration campaign. We leveraged highly targeted audience tactics to nurture prospects through to conversion. 

Challenge

In July 2021 PayPal launched its BNPL offering, PayPal Pay in 4. With Australia having one of the most mature and competitive BNPL markets with a wide range of services available to consumers, PayPal needed to shift from being known for safe online payments, to being a safe preferred instalment option.

While BNPL has penetration across all demographics, it has increased appeal against Digital Natives (18-35 Gen Y/ Gen Z). 

Our challenge was to amplify new product awareness and cascade this all the way down into driving consideration and uptake amongst this audience.

Solution

Fashion is one of the strongest verticals for PayPal customers (57%, PayPal eCommerce Index 2021) and PayPal’s Digital Natives target audience (Gen Z/Gen Y) over-index on BNPL usage in Australia, with 65% of Gen Y vs 45% of the population overall. There was an inherent opportunity to connect with a fashion-conscious Australian audience on a national scale to drive awareness and consideration of PayPal Pay in 4. From careful research, we came to our core media strategy to dominate the fashion space and leverage our action with a transformational partnership with the Melbourne Fashion Festival (MFF), which had strong alignment with our own.

PayPal engaged MFF for a three-year naming rights sponsorship, which meant PayPal could leverage the festival’s highly engaged audience and build brand equity within the fashion and BNPL spaces. The 10-day festival featured Australia’s most loved designers, shopping events and experiences, styling and beauty workshops, industry seminars, networking events, exhibitions, tours, and live entertainment.

PayPal used the sponsorship of MMF as a chance to show up differently and uniquely, to capture attention and interest of fashion shoppers. To do that, we developed a fully integrated, multi-channel national campaign over 8 weeks including: out of home advertising; brand ambassadorship with Aussie icon and celebrity, Vera Blue; a media partnership with TikTok, and a paid media brand campaign.

Continuing to drive social engagement while supporting local fashion businesses, we ran a co-marketing and ‘win a style spree’ competition with fashion merchants to via Instagram to encourage user generated content and shareability – all to drive product awareness and consideration at the heart of our campaign. 

Impact

We drove a 65% lift in Product Awareness and a staggering 114% in Product Consideration across our target audience, making it one of our most effective campaigns to date. On top of this, PayPal saw a 38% growth in their Pay in 4 product's share of PayPal's total transactions over the campaign period. They had a 7% increase in first time users of the product, and a 15% surge in daily active users - all culminating in strong lifts in total transactions and increased revenue. 

• 510 Pieces of Content
• 8.9M Total Reach
• 15.8M Total impressions
• 186% increase in consideration among key Digital Native Australians aged 18-24
• 117% increase in consideration among key Digital Native Australians aged 25-34