Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk is known for spouting marketing wisdom and forecasting trends. But his latest venture may raise a few eyebrows–because it lies within a fortune cookie.
Vaynerchuk, who has co-founded businesses from VaynerMedia to restaurant reservation app Resy to Empathy Wines, recently invested in OpenFortune, a company that produces ad campaigns that run on the paper slips in fortune cookies. OpenFortune’s new stakeholder has “significant” equity in the business, said co-founder and chief fortune officer Shawn Porat, who declined to disclose a specific figure.
According to Porat, OpenFortune aligned with Vaynerchuk’s tenet of investing in platforms with “underpriced attention”—those that are nascent and not yet fully understood by marketers, but are poised to have massive reach.
“I invested in OpenFortune because it just made complete sense to me. I believe the idea and believe in the co-founders’ ability to execute–that made me go all in,” Vaynerchuk said in a statement.
The investment from Vaynerchuk is a significant step for OpenFortune, which launched in 2017, creates fortune cookie advertising for 47,000 restaurants and delivery platforms in the U.S. and supplies printed messages to more than a dozen fortune cookie factories worldwide. The founders have set their sights on improving diners’ experiences and wooing more advertisers with their unusual proposition, claiming a comparable reach to Super Bowl commercials or tech platforms.
“This is Super Bowl-esque. Thirty-five percent of our brand partners have shifted their marketing budgets from sports sponsorships to us. That’s the area we play in,” said Porat.
The fortune you seek
Before OpenFortune, Porat was an entrepreneur in a different industry, grappling for success and attention. Then, one day while eating at a Chinese restaurant, “I saw how deeply people cared about fortune cookies–reading them aloud, laughing, passing them around the table,” he recalled. “I wished people spoke about my company that way, that it would get that kind of attention.”
Porat connected with Matt Williams—OpenFortune’s co-founder and chief cookie officer—who came from the ad industry, and the two hatched the unusual idea to advertise within fortune cookies. On one side of the paper slip would be the usual fortune, and the other side would hold a brand message. The concept made sense to them for a few reasons.
“In the moment you open a fortune cookie, you’re not distracted or on your phone. You’re completely focused on the fortune cookie, reading it and anticipating what’s next in your life,” Porat explained. “With other forms of advertising, everyone knows it’s mass marketing. A fortune cookie feels like it was meant for you.”
OpenFortune conducted a survey with Nielsen on fortune cookie habits. Their research found that 7% of people share their fortunes on social media, and 20% keep their slip after a meal.
“We realized we had something extraordinarily special here–not just a general media platform but an emotional tie-in,” Porat said. “We knew we had to guard the integrity of the fortune cookie as we were putting the brand on the back.”
Enter the brands
OpenFortune’s first major brand partnership was in 2018 with Capital One, which used fortune cookies to promote its new rewards card offering cash back on dining purchases. The company distributed 10 million ads to Chinese restaurants across the U.S., and the campaign went viral.
Since then, OpenFortune’s other clients have included Rocket Money, ZipRecruiter, Chime, Duolingo and Zelle. It estimates it reaches 135 million U.S. consumers every month with its fortune cookie advertising, and it has also expanded internationally into 24 countries across Europe, South America, Mexico, Canada, Asia and South Africa.
Over the next five years we want to take significant budget away from sports sponsorships like the Super Bowl.
Matt Williams, OpenFortune co-founder and chief cookie officer
A more recent campaign came with VeeFriends, Vaynerchuk’s NFT project, in which diners could scan a QR code on the back of fortune cookie slips and learn more about the collection. The campaign garnered more than 143,000 QR scans and over 122.5 million social impressions. The reach and social engagement also convinced Vaynerchuk to invest in OpenFortune.
Already cemented in the American Asian restaurant scene, OpenFortune hopes its newfound fortune from Vaynerchuk will help it scale even further.
Taking on the Super Bowl
The founders want advertisers to see the opportunity with OpenFortune as “you’re sponsoring the back of the fortune cookie,” said Williams. “Over the next five years, we want to take significant budget away from sports sponsorships like the Super Bowl.”
The company currently works with about two dozen brands, half of which have exclusive rights. For example, it signed a three-year deal with blockchain platform Algorand, agreeing not to work with any other blockchain brands.
With other forms of advertising, everyone knows it’s mass marketing. A fortune cookie feels like it was meant for you.
Shawn Porat, OpenFortune co-founder and chief fortune officer
OpenFortune takes bespoke creative approaches with brands when developing campaigns. Some advertisers have chosen to tie their message to the tone or emotion of the fortune– such as Expedia, which ran its campaign on the back of fortunes, referencing positive life experiences and spending quality time. Other clients, like GrubHub, wanted their placement on fortunes to be completely random.
“With a lot of brands, their mission is endemic to the fortune. When you connect the two emotions, there’s a harmonious relationship between the brand message and the fortune,” Williams said.
However, OpenFortune also rejects about 60% of brand approaches, according to Porat. Some—such as a QSR chain—would not be a good fit for a placement in a rival Asian restaurant, he explained.
Breaking open the cookie
Beyond their big ambition of diverting Super Bowl ad budgets, OpenFortune’s leaders are also changing the fortune cookie itself. They have recently started using AI chatbot ChatGPT to write many fortunes, which has “opened doors,” said Porat.
AI presents an opportunity to add variety to fortune cookie messages, he explained: “Fortunes went from being about your future to just statements–probably 85% of them are statements and 15% are actual fortunes. We’re flipping that, with 80% that are true fortunes about what’s going to happen in your future.”
ChatGPT will play a “significant role” within the company going forward, though Porat added: “It’s not taking over. It’s amplifying and making the experience better. We still need to guide it … Now we can generate so many fortunes about your actual future, which will make people excited.”
This will also improve consumers’ engagement with the brands that choose to advertise in cookies, he added.
Over the next few months, OpenFortune also plans to unveil “the first change to the fortune cookie experience in a century,” said Porat, who would only reveal that the innovation has been in development for two years.
As if he just cracked open a cookie himself, he is buoyant about the potential for both brands and customers. “We have the keys to people being optimistic about the future,” he said.
