Current Issue Summary
Dec 2023 (Vol. 64, Issue 4)
Can We Turn ASMR Experiences Into Advertising? College-Age Consumers’ Perceptions of ASMR Contents and Advertisements
For many college-age YouTube consumers, the tingles and relaxing sensations that come from experiencing ASMR can be weird and fun, but off-putting when, say, an endorser is too chatty and loud in the video. Susanna S. Lee (Temple University) and Huan Chen (University of Florida) use these insights to guide marketers and suggest that ASMR ads, and the media channels they air on (e.g., YouTube) are more effective at gaining attention than on traditional ads on media (e.g., TV). There were two parts to the research. Study 1 consisted of in-depth interviews with men and women 18-to-24 years old, as well as social media text mining. Themes that emerged included sensations described as weird at first, but later turning into “tingles,” along with relaxation, and stress and anxiety melting away.
Study 2 focused on the “Oddly IKEA” ASMR campaign on YouTube, addressing research questions on topics that consumers discussed around the campaign, and the relationship between top topic words and sentiments. A sentiment analysis of 7,724 YouTube comments on the selected campaign found that 24 percent of the total were categorized as positive. But the results also revealed risks to using ASMR, highlighting, for example, annoying celebrity endorsers featured in these ads.
Among the takeaways:
- “Celebrities who exhibit chattiness, loudness and high energy levels are not well matched with ASMR content, potentially leading to negative associations and detrimental effects.”
- “For ASMR advertising, themes encompass friendly, soft speaking voices, attention-grabbing, targeting young people and product-centered approaches.
- “Text mining analysis of the YouTube comments on IKEA’s ‘Oddly IKEA’ ASMR campaign revealed that the most frequently appearing words were ‘love,’ ‘good,’ ‘voice,’ ‘buy, and ‘relaxing.’
- “The sentiment analysis showed that, within 10 sentiment categories, 24 percent of the total comments were categorized as positive, constituting the largest category, whereas only 2.9 percent of the comments were categorized as disgust.”