A recent campaign for Capital One will be found in 10 million cookies distributed by 5,000 Chinese takeout restaurants over the next several weeks. The whole campaign is the work of OpenFortune, a marketing startup that -- you guessed it -- creates creative ads for clients through the medium of fortune cookie fortunes (a similar idea has actually been done before and even Robert Kennedy put campaign ads into cookies in the 1960s). The concept to put ads on fortunes was a seven-year effort for the company's founder, Shawn Porat. So Porat went about setting up a company with the on-the-nose name Fortune Cookie Advertising and reached out to advertising agencies and potential customers. Porat recalls. In 2014, he landed Missouri Lottery as his first client to adhere to his original vision, advertising inside 1 million cookies at Chinese restaurants in that state. It's Just That Your Advertising Isn't Very Good. Each campaign, Porat and Williams say, will have at least 100 different fortunes, tailored for the client's category. The other option is clients pay for the production of cookies outright and have them distributed in specific geographical areas, in which case the restaurants get the cookies for free. Several clients have also asked if they can have exclusivity in their category, say one specific car company being the only one to work with OpenFortune for a year.
Ads are everywhere. Not only do they fill web pages, social networks and app screens, they’re also found on many surfaces in the real world, including on billboards, trash cans and even subway turnstiles.
You can add the paper inside fortune cookies to the list.
A recent campaign for Capital One will be found in 10 million cookies distributed by 5,000 Chinese takeout restaurants over the next several weeks. The ad has already rolled out to customers of 10 restaurants. It wasn’t long before the stunt-like promotion hit the web.
Ben Kaufman, a serial entrepreneur who now works at Buzzfeed, found the ad in his post-meal cookie, then tweeted about it. His tweet was liked more than 10,000 times, then someone posted his photo to Reddit, where it received more than 32,000 upvotes.
The whole campaign is the work of OpenFortune, a marketing startup that — you guessed it — creates creative ads for clients through the medium of fortune cookie fortunes (a similar idea has actually been done before and even Robert Kennedy put campaign ads into cookies in the 1960s).
“We’re taking an American icon and putting a spin on it,” says Matt Williams, who joined the company in 2016.
The concept to put ads on fortunes was a seven-year effort for the company’s founder, Shawn Porat. The entrepreneur, who had previously founded JudgmentMarketplace.com (he sold a majority stake in the company), had been eating Chinese takeout in late 2010 and saw people at the next table interacting with their fortunes — reading them to each other and taking pictures. He then had the idea to put his website’s URL on the slips of paper. The effort led to a boost in traffic. So Porat went about setting up a company with the on-the-nose name Fortune Cookie Advertising and reached out to advertising agencies and potential customers. Most hated…
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