Waymo: Driving Buzz and Trust From Branded Cookies

Waymo is the world’s first fully autonomous, 24/7 ride-hailing service. No driver. No chit-chat. Just you, the road, and a car that doesn’t get lost or ask what you do for a living. Born from Google’s Self-Driving Car Project (name that doesn't’ exactly roll off the tongue),

Waymo operates in its hometown of San Francisco plus offers routes in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and soon-to-be Atlanta and Miami, all with a fully electric, renewable-energy powered fleet.

Their mission? Be the world’s most trusted driver, proving autonomous driving is tomorrow’s way of the road.

Launching the future of transportation is tough when most people are still emotionally glued to their steering wheels.

Waymo gets it. They’re not just offering a ride. They’re asking people to trust a car with no driver. That’s a big leap.

The Waymo One fleet runs on world-class tech. The navigation, the safety systems, the vehicle management – it’s all top of the line. But even the best product hits a wall if people aren’t ready to believe in it.

And let’s face it. To most people, Waymo still sounds like a Silicon Valley science project, not something you’d use to get to the airport with your kids in the backseat.

That’s where OpenFortune came in. To help Waymo feel less like a robot on wheels and more like a part of real life. All through a warm, trusted, oddly powerful little thing called the fortune cookie.

To move consumer minds (and wheels), OpenFortune cooked up a campaign that cut through Waymo’s biggest trust barriers but with bite-sized charm. Because even cutting-edge tech revolutions can start with a small, crunchy nudge.

Here’s how the Waymo campaign cookie crumbled, in all the best ways:

• 689,000 custom fortune cookies produced and shipped to partner San Francisco Chinese restaurants.

• Two months of active distribution with both in-person patrons and takeout orders.

• Bold, on-brand creative speaking to Waymo’s values and niche.

• Slip QR codes leading diners to learn more. (Talk about no crumbs left behind.)

• Plus a full brand lift study to measure results.

Making things even more seamless? Each fortune offered an underwear freebie if you brought your slip to a participating store. In one ad, OpenFortune and Aerie perfectly sewed together every stage of the funnel, from awareness to consideration through nurturing better in-store performance.

Turns out, these cookies didn’t just predict the future. They drove it.

OpenFortune’s curated brand lift study with diners turned partner restaurants into real-time focus groups eliciting insights for Waymo.

The results gave them something to drool over.

Waymo brand recall reached 74%. That’s 509,860 fortune-powered memories made especially impactful when past Waymo campaigns of similar scales averaged just 56.1% – a 31.9% increase.

Nearly 67% of diners interviewed admitted to discussing Waymo after cracking their cookies. Just over 5% texted someone about their fortune, and 45% said they were now more likely to actively look into Waymo’s routes and service areas.

The deliciousness didn’t stop there. Waymo’s fortune campaign wracked up an estimated total of 1.68M social impressions, with 7% of patrons sharing fortunes on social. Yes, that’s 48,230 branded cookiegrams floating around feeds.

Nearly 11.7% searched for Waymo after getting a cookie, meaning over 80,000 eyeballs scanning for deeper brand information just as you scan and scour traffic.

In the end, our campaign proved even a high-tech brand with self-driving smarts can win over hearts the old-fashioned way: through a well-timed, memorable experience. Waymo’s partnership with OpenFortune didn’t just drive awareness. It rolled higher recall and engagement rates, positive consumer curiosity, and greater brand recommendations all into one yummy, crunchy package.