Good Fortunes Meet Good Finances: Rocket Money’s Viral Awareness Campaign

Rocket Money is on a mission to help users stop wasting money without sucking the joy from life or crunching endless costs in a boring spreadsheet.

From subscription sleuthing to user-friendly budgeting brilliance, their personal finance app makes managing your cash flow feel less like homework and more like winning the lottery (if the lottery took place constantly in overnight-better bank statements).

Rocket Money had a powerful, well-designed platform and a new parent company (Rocket Companies, owner of Rocket Mortgage) ready to take it to the masses. But even in today’s world where budgeting platforms, financial information, and access is more mainstream than ever, cutting through the noise wasn’t so simple.

Rocket Money needed two things:

• Create mass awareness: Rocket Companies had only recently acquired the Rocket Money app. Time to make sure the world knew about it.

• Build brand familiarity: In a sea of budgeting apps, Rocket Money needed to stand out not as yet another tool, but as the tool for taking control of your finances – and not hate your life while doing it.

In short: Rocket Money didn’t want OOH ads that just shouted the loudest or blitzed audiences the heaviest. They wanted to be remembered, because they created real moments of meaning and connection.

Rocket Money tapped OpenFortune to launch a memorable, on-brand campaign that felt fresh, relevant, and delightfully fitting, reaching audiences when resistance was low and a memorability factor high. (Cue the dinner table.)

OpenFortune knew how to unlock an instant but intuitive pairing: fortune cookies with a financial success twist.

Here’s how the campaign stacked up:

• Overview: A nationwide fortune cookie campaign across several major U.S. cities, with fortune slips centered on financial prosperity and success – a natural and existing combo already.
  

• Execution: Front of fortune slips featured positive, financial windfall-themed messages fitting of both Rocket Money as a brand and the very spirit of cookies. Back of slips? A custom QR code leading audiences to learn more and download the Rocket Money app.
  

• Market: Distribution across top Asian restaurants throughout the U.S., nurturing dinnertime convos where money talk is as natural as asking for seconds.

They say money doesn’t grow on trees – but they never say anything about it coming in the form of cookies.

Rocket Money’s campaign brought the personal finance tool some seriously rich results: 

No reminders, no nudges necessary. Two-thirds of consumers remembered Rocket Money even without further incentives, signaling true ad stickiness you can take to the bank. That’s on top of nearly 1 in 10 people sharing their fortunes unprompted on social, serving vital earned media up family style.

Yet perhaps most telling of the fortune cookie campaign’s successful connection with audiences eating at the table? One in two recipients expressed wanting to check out Rocket Money post-meal. That’s not just awareness, that’s craving-worth consumer intent that feels empowering and engaging to the consumer. All in a world where real curiosity underpins real downloads.

In the end, Rocket Money’s partnership with OpenFortune proved that frugal budgeting can be fun – and fortune cookies aren’t just dessert, they’re a gateway to brand recall, curiosity, and love. All because Rocket Money knew to combine clever messaging with a medium people actually want to engage with. That’s where good things happen, in this case, right there at dinner.