MBBank combined with Son Tung MTP - Perspective on financial service combined with influencers or KOLKOC

Catching the Idol trend is no longer too difficult when MBBank's latest marketing campaign combined with VBiz's most popular young music star, Son Tung MTP, has just launched.

Next, let's examine the aforementioned media campaign with FinFan and offer our thoughts on how financial services in general, and fintech, in particular, can be combined with community influencers or KOC/KOL.

The combination event of MBBank and Son Tung MTP and the breakthrough of a digital bank in Vietnam

MBBank, the top digital bank in Vietnam in the period between 2018 and 2023

Along with the top banks at the forefront of digital transformation in the banking industry, MBBank is also a famous bank in this transformation as it continuously launches impressive digital transformation products, starting from the opening of the first smart bank branches in 2018.

MB is developing an ecosystem on two platforms: App MBBank (individual customers) and BIZ MBBank (business customers). The total number of customers that MB Bank serves by the end of 2022 has reached 20 million customers, an increase of 54% compared to the end of 2021. This bank aims to conquer 30 million customers in the period 2022 - 2026.

By 2023, after five years of operating in the market, this Military Bank's revenue increased steadily by 18-20%/year without needing additional employees, "champion" in the number of app users.

At the September 2023 Forbes summit, Mr. Luu Trung Thai, the Chairman of MB's Board of Directors, stated: "The banking industry has a tradition of about 700 years. The greatest opportunity in the history of the sector is the digital transformation bank. This is not a facetious slogan. We estimate that in the next four years, digital platforms will account for around half of the bank's total revenue. After putting this plan into practice for nearly 4 years, revenue on digital platforms has now reached 20%."

Son Tung MTP, a singer idolized by many people in Generation Z since 2014

Emerging since 2014 after the famous hit "Em của ngày hôm qua", Son Tung MTP has become a leading idol in the Vietnamese entertainment industry with a large number of fans.

Along with that, he also gave his fan community a very beautiful nickname, "Sky", showing the great respect of an artist for his admirers.

After 10 years of diligent artistic activities, receiving a lot of criticism as well as attacks from public opinion, today, Son Tung is increasingly asserting his position in the Vietnamese and international music market by continuously filming MVs at famous international locations as well as inviting famous international artists like Snoop Dog.

“Be the Sky”, MBBank's audacious marketing campaign featuring the young musician.

For the first time, MB teamed up with Son Tung M-TP and JCB to introduce the “Be The Sky” card, which is only available to the Sky fan community.

This helps the Sky family "unleash" its individuality by providing high-quality service experiences and a variety of alluring incentives.

The first bank cards in Vietnam that incorporate fandom membership cards were unveiled by MBBank during this event, featuring a range of Son Tung fan-branded cards.

Along with receiving numerous advantages, customers will have the chance to receive presents and exclusive deals for Son Tung M-TP-related events. In addition to three physical card versions—Daybreak, Starlight, and Apeiron—each with a unique design and significance, the offering also provides non-physical (virtual) Skycloud cards.

With the issuance of this card, all three units participating in the campaign, MBBank, JCB, and Son Tung, with their own company, M-TP Entertainment, will gain certain benefits when:

• Relying on the large customer base from Son Tung's fan base in Vietnam (more than 30 million people and most of them are Gen Z) will help MBBank expand its potential customer base and is also an ideal target for the 30th anniversary of the establishment of MBBank.
• The card issuing company, JCB, also has the opportunity to expand its scale and identity as most consumers are now familiar with Visa Card and Master Card, two card companies that first entered the market a long time ago.
• As for Son Tung, this is also an opportunity for him to show his class once again by combining with the giants of the banking industry and expanding other business and investment fields for his enterprise.

FinFan's perspective on the combination of fintech companies and influencers from this partnership

Vietnamese youth as a target for big banks

The fact that giants in the financial technology industry, especially digital banks, are collaborating with influential people like Son Tung or, most recently, the combination of Miss Grand Thuy Tien and Techcombank has partly expressed the desire to target the dynamic and creative young generation in Vietnam of big banking giants:

• Investing very methodically and meticulously in technology to bring the most optimal experience to young people (sometimes just transacting with a phone).
• Launching incredibly youthful campaigns with catchy names and taglines like "Why not" which speaks to young people's excitement and daring to think and act, and "Be The Sky" which is a combination of becoming a fan of Son Tung and adding another level of optimism by constantly focusing on the positive aspects of contemporary youth.

Aspiration to master digital technology of large banks in Vietnam.

Like the previous articles on our website about digital banking, since Timo Bank was born, the digital banking wave has begun to land in Vietnam and has been welcomed by a large number of technology enthusiasts in the market.

Not only stopping at upgrading their app system to make it most convenient for customers, today, banks and card issuers are starting to discover and realize the limitless potential of issuing non-physical credit or debit cards (virtual cards).

In most of their campaigns, they run parallel tests of this type of card combined with a physical card to measure customer reactions with this extremely new type of card.

Furthermore, they also integrate the most advanced technology to be able to identify the consumption behavior of each specific customer (a special feature that a virtual card can bring to their customer).

What are the opportunities for fintech companies when they want to target the Vietnamese market?

Case studies of Son Tung combined with MBBank as well as Thuy Tien combined with Techcombank also open up many opportunities for fintech companies in the near future.

Opportunity to develop the payment industry.

As the articles on our LinkedIn FinFan channel show, the development of technology has caused another new profession to be formed: influencer or KOL/KOC.

They do not have a large fan base like Thuy Tien and Son Tung; however, these people influence a specific customer group that the business is targeting.

At the same time, they can directly influence customers' purchasing behavior on social media and e-commerce platforms. Therefore, e-commerce and e-commerce parties really need companies that provide digital payment solutions to support such people in the market.

This invisibly creates a new market for financial technology companies in Vietnam as well as around the world if they can provide a payment solution that is fast, cost-effective, and affordable safety for the KOLs/KOCs mentioned above.

Opportunity to develop technology to be able to combine with giants in the banking industry.

The aforementioned banking behemoths' level of spending tolerance was demonstrated by their substantial financial expenditures to collaborate with Son Tung MTP and Thuy Tien.

Moreover, being very open in the issue of digital transformation of the banking industry has made it possible for these giants to have a very different mindset to receive the advanced technologies that fintech companies bring to them, especially cross-border payment technology as well as AI to identify the needs of each individual customer, which banking giants take a lot of time to apply and convert.

Opportunities for card issuers, especially virtual cards in the future

The combination with Son Tung and Thuy Tien is a big stepping stone for giants in the banking and finance industry such as MBBank and Techcombank.

However, the campaign will fail without the support of card issuers such as JCB, Visa, or Mastercard - physical card issuers that are already very familiar in the market for international payments.

However, as per FinFan’s analysis above, large banks such as MBBank and Techcombank are also working hard to issue virtual cards in parallel to satisfy users' need for touchless payment.

Therefore, fintech companies still have a huge room for growth in this industry, if they can combine with some big brands (not just banks, such as e-commerce platforms and travel agencies online (OTA), etc.) to be able to provide this service to them and bring more unique and interesting new experiences to both end users and financial managers of the above businesses.

Conclusion about the combination of Son Tung and MBBank in the "Be The Sky" campaign

With the above campaign, we not only see MBBank's ambition to continue to dominate the digital banking industry in the coming time with more than 30 million potential customers from the young singer's fans.

At the same time, this campaign also opens a new chapter in the combination of influencers with big brands and opens up new opportunities for not only the payment industry, cross-border payment technology, and advanced virtual card issuance technology in Vietnam in the coming years.