There’s a lot of post-Internet technology we take for granted. One piece that springs to mind as we dive into another season of holiday shopping is our digital wallets. It now seems impossible that 25 years ago, our payment options were limited to credit cards, personal checks, and cold hard cash. Then came PayPal and the dawn of the digital wallet. And how we pay for goods and services (even our cat sitter and financially-challenged kids in college) has never been the same.

PayPal actually began as two companies—Cofinity and X.com early in 1999. The first iteration of PayPal launched later that year. By March of 2000, the product had merged under the company name X.com. (Tech trivia buffs already know that one of the original partners in X.com was Elon Musk, who appears to have recycled that name when he acquired Twitter.) The other big thing that happened in 2000 was that PayPal adopted Ebay as its primary platform for strategically growing its user base. Two years later, in October of 2002, Ebay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in Ebay stock. But soon PayPal’s growth was outpacing Ebay’s, and the former tail started wagging the dog.

PayPal continued to innovate in the world of digital payment from 2010 to 2014, adding mobile and micropayments as well as in-store payments. In September of 2014, PayPal split from its parent Ebay, and since July 2015 it has been an independently-traded company. In Q4 of last year, PayPal’s total payment volume (TPV) reached $1.5 trillion. Currently PayPal has the largest share of the digital payment market, with 222 million active accounts and annual revenue of almost $30 billion.

“So why does PayPal advertise?” you might ask. Simple. Because it’s one thing to achieve PayPal’s current market share. It’s another thing to maintain top-of-mind awareness in a category that is rife with competitors. Now that the digital wallet market is in full bloom, there are hundreds of competitors (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo, Cash App, Samsung Pay, Zelle, Alipay, and Amazon Pay to name a few) all vying to be “the one” consumers choose over other options. And PayPal is no different in how it makes money than your conventional brick-and-mortar bank. It makes its “bank” on fees charged to both merchants and consumers for transactions processed through its platform.

Digital wallets—like banks—are essentially a “bland” category where consumers value trust far more than personality. Hence the marketing challenge. But PayPal seems to have met that challenge in a recent spot by employing the comedic talents of Will Ferrell. His popularity began even before PayPal’s as a SNL cast member in the mid-90s. Ferrell is perhaps best known for his iconic portrayal of Buddy in the 2003 comedy film Elf.

Before I review Ferrell’s spot for PayPal entitled “Pay Everywhere,” let me pontificate for a moment on the art of comedy in TV commercials. Humor, when it is actually achieved in a TV spot, is golden. Nothing makes it memorable like the fact that it gave us a good laugh. However, I am of the opinion that a good 90 percent of attempts at comedy in TV commercials fall flat. It’s great if it works, but if it doesn’t, it’s like that lame horse (with apologies in advance to the ASPCA) that ought to be put out of its misery.

Case in point: the recent and allegedly funny campaign from homes.com starring the comedic duo of Dan Levy (Schitt’s Creek) and Heidi Gardner (SNL). Levy certainly has the comic chops to make these spots work—as his multiple Primetime Emmy Awards prove. Gardner is also a very capable comedian. But the writing is mediocre (imagine creative input from a room full of realtors in business casual) and Levy and Gardner never quite gel as a comedy team. IMHO, the fundamental flaw here is that they botched the tried-and-true formula for comedic duos by casting another comedian (Gardner) as the straight man. (Of the two, the straight man is definitely harder to play.) Both are competing to get the laugh, and it just falls flat. This campaign is definitely one for the glue factory.

PayPal’s “Pay Anywhere” spot, however, is successful largely because it manages to leverage the brand of over-the-top comedy that Ferrell has made his career on. It works particularly well in this case because when your task it to “brand the bland,” subtlety doesn’t pay. “Pay Anywhere” puts Ferrell through his paces in a variety of digital payment situations from in-store buying to a neighborhood kids’ lemonade stand. It’s also a great comic send-up of the use of cliched advertising jingles (here it’s Ferrell’s own rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere”) as he sings along and even changes the lyrics.

One of the more memorable moments is when Ferrell appears in a clothing store, trying on a voluminous safety yellow down coat and pants with a fur bucket hat. TV is a visual medium, and this is visual comedy at its best. Another is the moment where he visits the lemonade stand and quips that PayPal keeps his data safe as he alleges that the kids might be shady. Other copy points are PayPal’s 5 percent cash back on transactions, which they work in without too much fuss and demonstrate that if all those credit card companies can offer cash-back incentives, PayPal can too.

Personally, I've had fewer back problems since I exchanged that fat billfold in my right pants pocket for a digital wallet. Ferrell’s performance in “Pay Anywhere” finally gave me a good laugh. These days, that’s worth even more that 5 percent cash back. Happy holiday shopping! 

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