Hershey Canada and UM are literally trying to give Canadians chills with a new marketing ploy for the Reese Peanut Butter Cup brand that uses the fast-growing practice of autonomous sensory meridian response, better known as ASMR.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups will be featured alongside five popular ASMR practitioners—otherwise known as “ASMRtists”—in an 80-minute movie called Reese the Movie: A Movie About Reese, set to debut on the streaming service Crave on June 9 before rolling out to YouTube on June 17.

Reese has a long association with the movies that dates back to Reese’s Pieces’ 1982 appearance in ET, but it’s among a select few brands—including IKEA, KFC and Michelob —that has dabbled in the ASMR space. It’s part of a brand-building effort intended to create “deeper meaning” between the brand and its core consumers says Mathieu Gamache, senior marketing manager for Reese, Oh Henry, Mix and Crunchers, with Hershey Canada.

ASMR was first coined around 2010, and is defined as a tingling sensation—variously described as “brain tingles” or “brain orgasms”—that starts at the crown of the head and works its way throughout the whole body.

ASMR can be triggered by a variety of auditory and visual cues, such as whispering, tapping of nails on various surfaces, lip-smacking or, according to 2018 report entitled More Than a Feeling, watching people do things in a “careful, attentive way” (eg. filling out a form).

Read the full article in The Message here.