PayPal is the latest company to bet on the appeal of Man Repeller founder Leandra Medine.
Building upon its partnership with designer Jonathan Adler last year, the online payment company tapped the star power of Medine to create her own series of holiday-themed digital gift card designs and greetings. As part of the collaboration, Medine will host a Facebook Live event on PayPal’s page on December 3, where she will share holiday gift ideas while browsing the Renegade Craft Fair in New York City.
The video will be the second edition of PayPal’s Local Selects series, a feature the company launched in June with the help of Medine. The first video featured Medine visiting the Melrose Trading Post in Los Angeles; she broadcasted live while walking around from shop to shop, sharing commentary. The experience was designed to function as a digital market, in that it helped viewers identify where to find the products mentioned by Medine and subsequently purchase them using PayPal.
PayPal also benefited from the promotion of the video on the robust social media accounts of both Medine and Man Repeller — the former has more than 556, 000 Instagram followers, while the latter boasts nearly 2 million.
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Medine is no stranger to partnerships: Earlier this year, she invested in beauty company Drunk Elephant, plus she has teamed with NARS on a video campaign and designed a line of shoes for Net-a-Porter. However, she said PayPal is among her more “straightforward” ventures.
“It’s such a ubiquitous brand; it’s part of everyone’s everyday life,” she said.
Though the imagery was created by a third-party graphic designer, Medine selected the graphics and the copy featured on the digital gift cards, including “Santa Claus is great, but there are some things only Benjamin Franklin can do” and “I hope this gelt lights up your Hanukkah.” The aim was to capture Medine’s trademark wit and humor, which has defined the voice of Man Repeller, which in October 2017 had more than 2.2 million unique monthly viewers.
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“This initiative for PayPal feels really modern,” Medine said. “If we know that a majority of people like receiving money or cash, and if it makes the holiday season less stressful — though I don’t like using that word, because it really is a joyful time of year — why not make the process feel more seamless and less time-consuming?”
PayPal embarked upon digital gift cards after conducting a survey that found 52 percent of American consumers wish they could ask for money, rather than traditional presents — though 55 percent feel giving money is “too tacky or impersonal.” However, at the same time, 54 percent cited feeling stressed about holiday shopping and fewer found it to be an enjoyable experience. Likewise, a study conducted by NerdWallet last year found that 29 percent of American shoppers felt stressed and 25 percent felt overwhelmed by the gifting process, citing financial burden and lack of clarity around if they were receiving the best deals.
In an attempt to alleviate some of this stress, PayPal is pairing the Medine partnership with two additional holiday launches: instant money transfer, which allows users to move funds to their bank account instantaneously for a $0.25 fee, and Money Pools, which lets multiple users contribute money to a particular group for things like group gifts.
