Waymo hid robotaxi ads inside fortune cookies at San Francisco restaurants

By autumn 2024 Waymo's San Francisco robotaxi service was scaling — trips had doubled in three months — but growth now depended on converting residents who still defaulted to Uber, Lyft or taxis. A conventional ad blitz would say 'the future has arrived'; Waymo wanted people to feel it.

Working with fortune-cookie ad network OpenFortune, Waymo slipped printed fortunes carrying the slogan 'The future is here' and a QR code for the Waymo One app into cookies served at dozens of Chinese restaurants across the city. It was the guerrilla tip of a broader outdoor and social campaign built on the same future-is-here theme.

The placement detonated when tech journalist Biz Carson tweeted a photo of her cookie: 'Only in San Francisco do you open a fortune cookie and find a Waymo ad.' The post drew over 572,000 views and 13,000 likes, and the story was picked up by Fast Company and others. The case later entered the Effie case library and won a 'Most Innovative Marketing Campaign' nomination at the AMA San Francisco awards.

Put the 'future is here' message where futures are told

The medium was the metaphor: fortune cookies are literally about predicting the future.

Cost was trivial — printed slips in existing cookies — while earned reach was enormous.

It targeted the exact receptive audience: adventurous diners in Waymo's launch city.

The single-tweet virality proved the idea was self-spreading, requiring no paid amplification.

When the medium already carries your metaphor, a tiny, cheap placement can out-earn a billboard — the audience does the amplification because the joke is worth retelling.

The cookie stunt ran only in San Francisco even as Waymo expanded to Austin, Los Angeles and Phoenix, but the earned coverage far exceeded the placement's scale, and the broader 'future is here' platform continued across markets. The campaign was later recognized in marketing-award circles, including a 2025 AMA SF Excellence in Marketing award nomination and an Effie case listing.