PayPal reinforces safety commitment in maiden India ad campaign

PayPal has unveiled its first advertising campaign in India—Safe Hai—emphasising the company’s commitment towards securing digital transactions. The campaign highlights the online payments company’s focus on risk and security, backed by insights that online safety is a priority for Indian consumers. Through this campaign, PayPal seeks to highlight core offerings of buyer protection, fast checkout and safe and secure shopping across the globe.

Safe Hai offers a ‘slice-of-life’ portrayal of an Indian family and its quest for a secure online payment experience. In the ads, PayPal takes care of the family’s apprehensions around paying digitally for their gifts, allowing them to focus on what is most important–shopping. Capturing the wedding preparations of an Indian bride and an American groom, the launch commercial opens with the bride’s mother curiously shopping online for a “Texan hat” hat to gift the groom’s father. After an interesting turn of events and overcoming the apprehensions of paying for the hat online, the families finally exchange gifts discovering, in the process, the global-local connect of PayPal and how it is a ‘safe’ way of transacting domestically as well as from across the globe. The subsequent series of commercials show the same families indulging in a hassle-free gifting spree with each other–be it a wedding cake or an ethnic attire

The campaign has both traditional and digital legs to it and aims to drive comprehension amongst consumers and merchants how PayPal is the easier way to pay.

In a conversation with Adgully, PayPal’s head of marketing Jayant Desai shed light on the company’s understanding of the Indian market. Here are the edited excerpts:

Tell us about PayPal’s inaugural ad campaign for India.

PayPal is a two-sided network. We are a B2B as well as a B2C business so we work with consumers as well as merchants. Whether consumers want to pay and merchants want to get paid is between the two parties and PayPal makes it safe and secure for both parties to engage in the transaction. The campaign that we are currently launching is consumer facing. It basically prompts people and gives them the confidence about transacting online. The campaign talks to consumers about what the brand brings to them as a value proposition from a buyer protection perspective. For instance, if you order something and what arrives is not appropriate then, as a consumer, you are protected by a buyer protection policy. At the same time, we offer pre-return shipping up to a certain amount. As we are a global player and we have international acceptance, PayPal is probably unique in the sense that it offers consumers a single place where they can transact in India as well as with PayPal’s merchants globally.

Do you believe that the demonetisation drive helped accelerate business?

Demonetisation has been like a carpe diem for everyone in the payment world. It really marks an inflection point in the journey to digitise India.  Our country is still a cash market, as 85 to 90 percent of the transactions happen in cash. I think it’s a very positive and encouraging step that the Indian government is leading the digital online payments revolution in India. Hence, demonetisation is a milestone in the journey.

Share some key insights about the target audience that you address through the campaign.

In the context of PayPal, our research on the Indian consumer revealed the need for safety and security of their online transactions. There was, of course, the need for convenience and other factors but the one major thing that came to our notice was safety and security of online payments. The Indian market is slightly different than any other market because we have a two-factor authentication method. In many countries, including the United States, there is no two-factor authentication.

Which prominent online merchants have you tied up with?

We have a number of large merchants that we have tied up with among which are BookMyShow.com, Yatra.com and MakeMyTrip.com. We have some in the lifestyle segments as well. We have a long list that keeps increasing on a regular basis. We have a fair amount of acceptance across merchants and e-commerce portals our target audience frequents.