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A girl group music video appears on a securities firm's YouTube channel, and a dating reality show about blind dates replaces investment information. Brokerages that once focused on explaining financial products are now leading with music and entertainment to raise interest in investing and win over younger customers.
An AI Girl Group Made by a Brokerage — Music Video Tops 2.55 Million Views
Samsung Securities (016360) said on the 21st that the music video for "OVERRIDE," the debut single of LUMINA, a four-member virtual girl group the firm created in-house, has surpassed 2.55 million views on YouTube about a month after its release.
The video shows the four members straddling motorcycles and staring into the camera, and performing group choreography among derelict buildings. Fast techno rhythms and heavy electronic sounds have drawn comparisons to the girl group aespa.
What stands out is that all four members are virtual figures created with artificial intelligence. Their producer is not an entertainment agency but Samsung Securities.
The group's name comes from the English word "luminous," meaning shining. The concept is that four members with distinct personalities together complete a single light.
The debut song carries a message about breaking away from established rules and preconceptions to forge one's own future. Samsung Securities linked that to an attitude of seeking new possibilities in finance and investing.
Viewer reactions also differed from those to conventional financial content. Comments included remarks that the dance lines looked natural for AI, that the song stayed in their heads, and questions about whether the video really had been posted on a brokerage's official channel. When the lyrics mentioned a "red light," one viewer joked that they hoped a red light would show up in their own stock account as well, a wish for rising prices.
Samsung Securities plans to develop LUMINA not as a one-off promotional character but as a digital content asset it can use on a continuing basis. It intends to expand the group's activities to follow-up music videos, short-form challenges and hosting duties.
Unlike hiring a celebrity as an advertising model, using an in-house character allows for repeated appearances across a range of content. Whether high view counts translate into actual investment customers, however, has to be verified separately.
Dating and Variety Shows Instead of Investment Tips — The New Brokerage YouTube
The financial industry's content experiments do not stop at AI idols. Brokerages are also producing their own variety shows built around dating and daily life.
Shinhan Securities (a wholly owned subsidiary of Shinhan Financial Group, 055550) launched a dating show, "One-Night Blind Date," in August through its official YouTube channel, Alpha TV.
One female participant and three male participants live together for two days and one night and get to know one another. Unlike a typical blind date, the format has participants meeting several prospective partners at the same time.
The participants choose how much of their limited time and date budget to spend on each person. When they learn something new about a partner, they sometimes revise earlier decisions.
Shinhan Securities compared that process to an investor's asset allocation. It applied to dating the principle of dividing limited funds among several investments and adjusting the weightings as market conditions change.
Mirae Asset Securities (006800) released "Free Period" in the first half of this year, a show in which university students share their views on investing, spending and dating. More recently it launched a series, "Investing Like Dating," that introduces a dating dilemma before moving naturally into a discussion of stock investing.
What these programs have in common is that they do not put financial products front and center. They first show viewers something familiar — dating and music — and build investment concepts into it.
Views Rise, but Customer Conversion Is Another Matter — The Challenge in Content Competition
Brokerages are turning to entertainment content to create points of contact with potential customers who have no interest in investing.
Brokerage YouTube channels have traditionally centered on market outlooks, stock analysis and introductions to financial products. That is useful for people seeking investment information, but it has limits in drawing in viewers who are unfamiliar with finance.
Music and variety shows, by contrast, can be enjoyed without any investing experience. The strategy is to build brand awareness through content first and then convert that into interest in financial services.
An industry official said customers do not visit a brokerage's channel simply because they are interested in investing, adding that strategy is shifting toward using entertaining content to capture the attention of potential customers and channel it into brand traffic.
Still, a program's popularity cannot be equated with marketing results. Even when a music video draws heavy traffic or a variety show generates buzz, whether that leads to new account openings and higher trading volumes requires separate analysis.
