Nissan was looking to generate awareness for the 2023 Ariya, its first fully-electric SUV, and connect with a younger audience. As America’s leading car culture brand that is focused on entertaining and educating the next generation of automotive enthusiasts via its YouTube channels, Podcasts, and social media–Donut was their first choice.

The brief was to create a series of branded segments that showcased as many of the car's custom features as possible, but in a fun way that still made the Ariya appealing to Donut’s viewers.

Despite this being Donut’s first-ever sponsorship from the legacy car manufacturer, Nissan entrusted the Donut team to conceptualize all the mid-roll segments for the YouTube videos, and Donut’s social media channels. They were meant to be all the unique branded segments, but Nissan liked the ASMcaR concept and execution so much that they requested ASMcaR run as two of their mid-roll placements.

The idea behind ASMcaR was to be a twist on the popular trend of creating videos and audio clips of auditory or visual elements that stimulate the body and trigger Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response–ASMR. Leveraging ASMR allowed Donut to honor Nissan’s request of including as many car features as possible in the branded segment, but in a way that was unique to Donut and its catalog of work.

ASMcaR helped amplify Donut’s ability to ideate, develop, and execute best-in-class partnerships. It also helped exhibit to Donut’s audience that the team was growing its advertising business to include household brands without losing sight of their voice and values. It proved to partners that Donut could work with legacy brands to deliver campaigns that honored the partner's values while still resonating with the Donut audience and performing well. Since the Nissan campaign, Donut has executed partnerships with Valvoline, KCHiLiTES, Hankook, and others.

Donut has more than 8.5 million YouTube subscribers, all of whom are highly engaged and enthusiastic about every piece of content. By leveraging Donut’s editor-in-chief as well as Donut’s signature brand of humor, this branded segment did not feel out of place or inauthentic to the audience. The comments on the first airing of ASMcaR proved that the audience was engaged in the branded segment and the product. A few examples include:

“That ASMR Nissan ad was outstanding. The perfect application of Pump-style comedy.”

“Best Nissan ad I’ve ever seen.”

“Greatest Nissan commercial of all time. Gonna go buy an Ariya now.”

“That is probably the best commercial I’ve seen in my life. I actually enjoyed watching it and want more.”

Introducing Donut’s partnership with Nissan via the ASMcaR video helped bring awareness and excitement to the campaign, and immediately engaged the audience with the Ariya.

ASMcaR had the biggest reach of all the branded segments produced in partnership with Nissan. The integration of sponsored segments into Donut’s videos drove 9M+ total program views with 178M+ total impressions. Across Instagram alone, Donut’s Nissan integrations generated 17M+ impressions. Additionally, as previously mentioned, the video was a huge hit with the Donut audience. So much so that it inspired many comments from fans (more than usual for branded segments) and inspired Nissan’s own ASMcaR social campaign.

Since Nissan’s inaugural campaign, Donut’s roster of clients and the uniqueness of branded segments have continued to grow. Donut’s work with Nissan and ASMcaR specifically helped catapult Donut’s client roster to include more legacy brands, including exclusive category sponsorships with Valvoline, KCHiLiTES, Hankook, and Allstate. It has also led Nissan to sign another partnership deal with Donut for 2024 and helped re-sign existing sponsors, Borla exhausts and Mother’s Polish, to larger deals.