Pay Me Maybe

The Context

The San Francisco City Attorney reached a class action lawsuit settlement with Money Mart (also known as Loan Mart) requiring it to repay California consumers who took out payday loans. The lawsuit alleged that Money Mart offered loans to customers at interests rates of up to 400 percent, keeping them in a vicious cycle of borrowing.

The Challenge

Develop and manage a statewide outreach campaign to identify consumers who may be eligible for restitution. There were three main challenges to accomplish this task. Firstly, there was no data or records as to who the borrowers were. Secondly, the deadline to reach them was extremely short, only 90 days. Lastly, there were limited human resources and no budget.

The Solution

Newspapers were slowly spreading awareness about the settlement. Since we only had three months to reach as many people in California as possible, it was essential for broadcast TV news to pick up our story.

We gained valuable insight from monitoring which videos were going viral on social media. Using these findings of what was trending, we developed a no-budget campaign by producing the parody video Pay Me Maybe, of the 2012 summer hit song Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen.

With less than a month to produce, we recruited community volunteers as actors and a local female singer for the new lyrics. The video called attention to a toll-free hotline to apply for restitution. By engaging our volunteers' friends and family on social media, we were able to start a buzz and make the video popular through the process of social sharing.

The Result

By pushing the boundaries of traditional government communications and doing the unexpected, the Pay Me Maybe video garnered news coverage statewide, with 8,000 claims totaling $5.5M.