Love at First Bite: How Warner Bros. Fortune Film Promo Stirred Hearts and Appetites

Warner Brothers' studio may be Hollywood’s love story factory. For decades, they’ve been the creative masterminds behind rom-com royalty like When Harry Met Sally, Notting Hill, You’ve Got Mail, and enough meet-cutes to power Hallmark Channel spinoffs on repeat.

Their rom-coms make audiences laugh, cry, and re-believe in the magic of human connection (at least till the credits roll).

Warner Bros needed a savvy system to market Isn’t It Romantic, their latest cheeky and charming film in its rom-com portfolio. And they were especially cognizant of a growing barrier facing film promos: saturated content choices and moviegoers’ attention spans feeling shorter than a TikTok dance trend.

To make an impact with audiences, film campaigns today have to do more than just look pretty. That especially rings true for its OOH, where elements like stickiness, recall, and emotional resonance can often be the measurable difference between studio hit and flop.

All this fueled Warner Bros’ big hurdles:

• Film choice saturation, amplified by competition from streaming: Today’s audiences scroll past 10,000 ads a day. Even the sweetest romantic gestures don’t stand out when everyone’s shouting.
  

• Banner blindness: Digital clutter has made consumers nearly immune to traditional movie promos, especially static ads.

• The pressure for authenticity: Audiences want campaigns that feel clever and organic, not “marketing-y” – particularly for something as human as a romance story. Try too hard, and you’ve lost them.

The sweetest plot twist out there? Warner Bros teaming up with OpenFortune for a smart, sensitive, and yes, delicious spin on film promo OOH. 

OpenFortune’s cookie campaign focused on serving up witty, romantic fortunes right in the heart of Manhattan. We knew cookies can serve as bite-sized storytelling moments, perfect portals to spark a moment of joy, butterflies, and an audience grin.

Exactly why people love rom-com genres.

Here’s what Isn’t It Romantic’s campaign courted:

• Tens of thousands of custom fortune cookies landing in popular dinnertime Manhattan restaurants, hitting diners exactly where date nights happen. (No coincidence there.)

• Love-themed fortunes packed with romance, spark, and love, like you just witnessed a proposal in Central Park.

• Cohesive creative integration. Every slip complemented Isn’t It Romantic’s other witty OOH ads and warmed audiences toward ticket bookings

Love stories deserve grand gestures, and this one’s came wrapped in a little white slip of paper making a measurable mark on Manhattan diners.

In an industry where capturing attention can feel harder than convincing your best friend to fall in love with you (queue the classic third-act twist), Warner Bros and OpenFortune delivered a campaign that was funny, thematic, and wildly effective.

The results were enough to give all of us heart eyes:

• 80% unaided movie recall. Audience awareness levels, spurred by the fortune’s clever, complementary theme, making folks remember the movie long after dessert.
  

• 500K+ social impressions. Who can resist sharing an unexpected but irresistible fortune online, particularly when its message of love and connection is so universally resonant?
  

• 81% lift in likelihood to see the movie. When you tell the right story (in the right cookie), hearts (and wallets) follow.

Turns out, magic strikes when clever copy brings out the power in human love and connection. And that’s what we call a happy ending (with extra cookies for the credits).