PayPal Global Rebrand “Championing Possibilities”
📰 Creative REview UK “PayPal Puts People FIRST IN NEW IDENTITY” Link 📰
Background: PayPal has remained at the forefront of the digital payment revolution for 30 years, making financial services and commerce more convenient, affordable, and secure. But with the changing landscape of digital payments and new competitors entering the category, PayPal recognized the need to re-energize the brand with a global rebrand encompassing its visual, verbal, and sonic identity.
Execution: The new brand purpose — “Championing Possibilities For Everybody” — became a rallying cry for the overhaul, representing PayPal’s ongoing mission to unlock opportunity in customers’ lives every day by making access to money easy, fast, and more enjoyable.
Brand Guidelines
A few highlights. The whole thing was over 250 pages.
And it was only one of the dozen or so guidelines and toolkits created by the Brand Team that year… 🫠
Portal Design System
The “Portal” design system was created as part of the rebrand. It featured the PayPal monogram splitting apart and a transaction happening in the middle of the two P’s. With Brand Team and agency partners, we tested its capabilities and limitations of using illustrations, live-action footage, and text to create guidelines around it’s usage. Many of these became social assets while the live-action soccer assets were featured in-stadium at PayPal Park, the home of the San Jose Earthquakes.
The work is a personal favorite from my time at PayPal.
✍️ Writing Style Guide ✍️
In addition to the Brand’s Verbal Identity, I created a comprehensive Writing Style Guide to ensure brand consistency across multiple agencies, marketing segments, PR/newsroom, product, and corporate comms teams. It was created in close collaboration with PayPal’s DEI&B team and the Product Content Design team. I also oversaw it’s international transcreation for European and Asian markets. Go on… Ask me my thoughts on the Oxford comma, em dashes, or CamelCase!!!
🚧 Writing Workshops 🚧
The Brand Team also conducted training sessions with every internal department at PayPal as well as partner agencies across the world.
(Don’t miss those 4am calls with Stockholm followed by a full day of work and 9pm calls with Singapore!)
Below, I’m sharing a few slides I used during training sessions that showed the evolution of the voice and offered messaging training tools and example copy for PayPal audiences.
Brand Team Consulting
Throughout the year, the Brand Team consulted and reviewed work being produced by internal departments and partner agencies.
We helped hone concepts and polish the creative output before final approval. These were two of my faves that we got to touch —
including an execution of a campaign line I wrote, “It Pays To ____ with PayPal.”
👨💻 My Role At PayPal 👨💻
Brand Team Creative Director (Copy) | 1 Year Freelance Contract
Helped lead a Global Brand Refresh, including new Brand Voice & Tone and developed a comprehensive Writing Style Guide with input from the internal DIE&B team, Corporate Comms, Product, Marketing, and Legal
Directed training sessions with every internal department and dozens of partner agencies; worked hand-in-hand with agencies on the development of countless social, digital, email, and video campaigns; Led Transcreation / Translation of Brand Guidelines and Writing Style Guide into European and Asian markets
Worked alongside partner agencies to develop additional global guidelines: Social Media Playbook, Motion Guidelines, Photography Guidelines, PayPal USD (Cryptocurrency), and Holiday Toolkits
Wrote and developed Messaging Frameworks for Consumer and Enterprise segments of PayPal’s core business
Writing/Terminology Analysis with Brand Strategy/Architecture team on updates to subsidiary brands: PayPal Honey, PayPal Braintree, Xoom by PayPal, plus internal PayPal groups: Employment Resource Groups (ERGs), PayPal University, PayPal Careers
Oversaw website redesigns and updates across .com, newsroom, investor relations, about us, careers, and internal swag store
Part of internal creative SWAT team for fast-moving projects: PayPal Votes, Hurricane Ian, PR Crisis, etc.
The Team
Company: PayPal (Brand Team)
Head of Brand Marketing Strategy + Branding: Emanuele Madeddu
ECD Brand Team: Keith Anderson
GCD Brand Team: Jen Stern
CD Brand Team (AD) // Enterprise Segment: Page Kishiyama | CD Brand Team (AD) // Consumer Segment: Jean-Baptise Vieille
CD Brand Team (CW) Enterprise + Consumer: Nate Totten
Director Global Brand Creative Production: Howie Howell
Global Integrated Brand Producer, Marketing: Jason Pelton
Senior Program & Project Management: Yvonne Resendez
Director Brand Strategy: Carol Cho | Brand Naming & Architecture: Justin Gamero
Brand Strategy Lead: Nicole Cillette
Advertising / Branding Agencies: Gretel // Media Monks // Swift