Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups have long been a market leader, but in recent years, sales had declined, particularly among younger snackers. To maintain The Hershey Company brand’s top position, Anomaly came up with an idea that would celebrate the tactile experience of unfurling a pack of Reese cups. It made an ASMR movie.

A growing trend online, Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) videos offer viewers comforting sensory experiences best described as “the chills.” The brand brought five of YouTube’s top ASMRtists together into one very silent, very orange room and had them star in a feature-length film shot by Hollywood cinematographer André Turpin. For 82 minutes, they crinkled, tapped, snapped, chewed and whispered about the ways real Reese fans eat their Peanut Butter Cups.

Distributed on Crave, “Reese The Movie: A Movie About Reese” was given the blockbuster launch treatment with ubiquitous OOH advertising. As a special preview, a total of twelve minutes of the film was shown as commercial breaks during the Handmaid’s Tale season three premiere. The film was immediately made available on Crave, and then on YouTube a week later.

The campaign also included trailers on TV, in theatres, and on social, with an audio trailer on Spotify. Movie posters ran in bus shelters nationally, the ASMRtists went on a national press junket and the brand set up pages for the film on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.

The significant effort yielded significant results. Reese saw a 9.2% increase in sales and a 70% increase in Google searches. It also garnered 62 million media impressions. Finally, the movie was viewed over 500,000 times, proving there’s a market for films about whisper-talkers who crinkle Reese wrappers.