ASMR videos are everything political ads are not. Soft and soothing, they’re a sensory experience listeners say they like for relaxation, insomnia, and stress relief. By contrast, political ads tend to be loud, obnoxious, and unavoidable when you’re forced to watch and listen to them during commercial breaks.
There’s now some overlap in the Venn diagram between ASMR and politics, though. The creators of an ad in support of Vice President Kamala Harris applied the techniques of ASMR to political persuasion for a spot that quietly sells Harris’s record of lowering healthcare costs.
The ad, from the political committee ProgressNow AZ-Federal, shows hands with brat green nails tapping an inhaler. “The Biden-Harris administration capped the cost of inhalers at just $35 for millions of Americans,” the narrator whispers. “Kamala Harris will continue to take on Big Pharma and lower costs for everyday American.”
The rest of the ad shows the disembodied hands bejeweling the inhaler: The tiny jewels rattle as they’re shaken in their bottle, then tinkle as they’re poured in a bowl. The end card reads “Vote For Kamala Harris” in a pink serif font. ProgressNow AZ did not respond to a request for comment.
ASMR has grown in popularity since the term, for autonomous sensory meridian response was coined by Jennifer Allen in 2010. Today on YouTube and social media, videos of clicking, whispering, and brushing can draw millions of subscribers and followers.
That the style and sound of ASMR has found its way to presidential campaign advertising represents a new mainstreaming of the phenomenon, but it’s not the first example of political ad makers turning to quieter ways to sell their candidates this year. Make America Great Again, a super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump, began airing ads this summer modeled on YouTube’s “Enjoy The Zen” ad breaks.
Instead of ASMR-style whisper narration, like in the pro-Harris ad, these pro-Trump ads use white noise as their soundtrack to argue for Trump’s competence without uttering a word. The combined sights and sounds of scenes, like a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle driving over gravel alongside a quiet border wall, or a U.S. warship sailing through calm waters, are used to suggest that returning Trump to office will make the U.S. and world affairs more stable.
Not everyone likes ASMR, just as not everyone who lived through the four politically tumultuous years under Trump will find the underlying argument of MAGA’s “Enjoy The Zen”-style ads convincing. Still, the muted approach these ads take is creative. Sometimes, a whisper can speak louder than a shout.