When launching a challenger brand in a crowded market, while trying to win market share from established players, it’s important to tell customers what makes you different, so they have a reason to switch, or at least try your brand and your product. We mapped out customer pain points and learned that ‘speed to money’ was one of the main pain points for our target customers in this category. The time it takes to send money internationally is simply too long. Time was so critical. It was a question of being able to send and receive money fast to pay for that emergency hospital bill for a dad in Nigeria or being able to put protein on the table for a family in the Philippines. Speed simply matters.

Reviewing the capabilities of Xoom, ranked against competitors in the category, it turned out that Xoom’s speed to market was unparalleled. In some money transfer flows, like UK to the Philippines for example, it was a matter of seconds between the sender pressing ‘send’ in their app, and the money being received across the world in the Philippines. We found our killer USP. Speed to money was not only Xoom’s differentiator against competitors, it was answering unmet customer needs. That’s the winning sweet spot we want!

Usain came on board to star in Xoom’s launch campaign. Who else? Our USP is speed, our customers need fast cross-border money transfer. Usain, the fastest man alive, and the best choice for drumming up noise and getting attention for Xoom at launch, getting money senders to notice us.

With some great contacts in Jamaica, we were able to secure Usain for our campaign. Not only that, we were able to convince his team to let Usain star in our quite unusual campaign…

Yes. Usain is awesome, but he has been around - speaking in advertising term of course. Usain sponsored anything from trainers to Virgin media. So how do we borrow Usain’s equity and make it uniquely ours? The answer – we challenged Usain to do something he has not done for any other brand before. We convinced him to become PayPal’s intern! Usain Bolt, PayPal’s intern, is not only a headline you would not expect to hear, we also took Usain away from his natural habitat – trainers and running tracks – and placed him in the office environment.

Instead of getting out of the gates, Usain was getting jumped paper from the office printer. Instead of running tracks, Usain was running late with reports. Instead of his Jamaican running shirt, we put him in a tie and shirt. A mockumentary-style video (think The Office series) went viral.