PayPal is widely known as the safer, easier online payment method for businesses as well as consumers. However, many medium and large UK merchants regarded PayPal strictly as a small-business solution. We needed to puncture this prejudice and show the e-commerce decision makers how adding a PayPal payment option to their website would significantly drive incremental sales, and fast.

The campaign needed to show at a glance how easy it is to miss out on millions of customers, and how PayPal makes it easy to attract their business.

The resulting ‘Unwelcome' campaign concept posed a confrontational question - ‘Are you making 20 million online shoppers feel unwelcome?' - and employed visual irony with a humorous touch. Our Unwelcome concept grabbed attention in an entertaining way and drove home the point: PayPal makes much more of an impact on your business than you might have thought.

The campaign was executed using a mix of DM, press, exhibitions and micro-sites.

How well did it do?

The objective to win 40 new clients: we achieved 100.

PayPal was so pleased with the outcome that they asked us to extend the Unwelcome campaign with new executions, and broadened our role to include complete redevelopment of their UK B2B website.