Bankers Are Using Squid Game To Advertise Their Services

The cultural impact of Netflix’s Squid Game continues to unfold in interesting ways following the announcement that the show is officially the streaming service’s biggest series launch of all time.

In the show, financially destitute people living in South Korea are recruited by a shadowy organization to participate in a macabre contest. The 456 competitors are taken to a secluded island and told that they could win a life-changing sum of $38 million if they stand victorious in a series of children’s games. The catch, however, is that if they lose, they die.

One of the more memorable aspects of the show is its visual style, using bright colors and unique aesthetic choices to portray the organization’s uniforms and logos. When the recruits are first given an invite to the game, a business card displays simple triangle, circle, and square shapes on one side and the phone number for the organization on the other.

Those shapes, we later learn, are tied to the final titular game in the show, but the PlayStation-esque symbols also don the helmets of the workers and soldiers of the organization. It is certainly one of the more memorable motifs in the series.

Now a bank in Chicago is apparently using the ubiquity of those symbols to advertise its services to customers. Check out the Reddit post for yourself below.

We’ll admit that it’s a bit strange for a finance brand to associate with what is essentially a quasi-totalitarian organization steeped in corporatism and run by mysterious and amoral billionaires, but it’s certainly grabbed people’s attention.

Many in the comments lauded the marketing tactic.

Some even wondered whether a bank teller might resemble the slap-happy Salesman character, known for lurking in subway stations to ensnare new recruits in Squid Game.

Another user remarked that it may be “disingenuous coming from banks that usually just perpetuate debt hardship, but still very clever.”

Are you starting to get fatigue from all these Squid Game references in pop culture, or do you want even more? Leave it in the comments below.