Picture this: It’s nine AM. You’re in Hong Kong. You’ve got a belly full of coffee, a lanyard around your neck, and a smile on your face.
It’s Consensus time, baby. The biggest conference in Web3.
Doors open. The auditorium’s abuzz. Thousands of people mixing and mingling. Row after row of display booths calling your name, some larger than your apartment.
Branded freebies. Games. Prizes. Handshakes. Constant noise. Constant stimuli.
A constant fight for your precious attention.
The problem? Every company was fighting the same way.
Same booths. Same decks. Same “game-changing” pitches repackaged and recycled, despite promising "unique solutions" that would change the industry.
Consensus boasts itself as the place to get three months’ worth of meetings done in three days. That’s a killer elevator pitch — but we have to ask: What’s the point of all the elbow-rubbing if ten minutes later you’re forgotten?
We probably had over a thousand conversations that week with crypto leaders, blockchain pioneers, technofuturist influencers, entrepreneurs in every web3 niche — and the same question cropped up by them time after time: How the hell do we grab peoples’ attention?
Everyone wants to be different, but at OpenFortune, we’re one of the few actually bold enough to do something about it.
When Attention Is the Challenge, Authentic Memories Are the Answer
OpenFortune’s entire existence is to stand out. Did we have a Consensus booth? Of course, but it’s not enough to wait for attention to come your way.
You must create experiences. And we sure as hell did that.
Everything we did was designed to cast aside the typical conference interaction script.
Instead of waiting for folks to trickle to us, we hit the floor. We ran around with bags full of fortune cookies initiating eating contests with attendees (how many fortune cookies could you slam in 30 seconds?). We had dance-offs. We juggled. We create on-the-spot guessing games. We used a snake (ok, not a real one, but we tried, we really tried).
Our CMO set up a live podcast studio and chatted with dozens of today’s most interesting web3 leaders, so we could build content and relationships that extended far beyond the event.
People may think it’s absurd, but those tend to be the same flavor of folks who will never see their ad campaigns smash social shares, brand search, word-of-mouth referrals, unaided recall, long-term ad retention…we could go on.
Even when we did follow the standard playbook — like when our President Carlo Palomino moderated a panel on web3 investment — he made an impact that actually got people’s attention.
He opened with a dance. Handed out cookies mid-session. Turned a panel into a performance and game. And in the middle of a rooftop venue with the Hong Kong skyline behind him, he proved the point: attention follows the unexpected.
That’s what OpenFortune does. We don’t interrupt moments. We create them.
If you’re not familiar with our game:
We are global. Distribute cookies across 100k partner restaurants globally, reaching up to 300M people every month in 30 countries around the world.
We are tangible. >90% of companies that attend Consensus eat, drink, sleep, and breathe in the digital. Fortune cookies let you physically zig while competitors pixel zag.
We are experiential. You’re sitting around a table. You’re unwrapping your cookie amongst friends, family. You share your fortunes. You laugh. You listen. Hello, pattern interruption. Hello, real conversation.
We are a surprise and a delight. You’ve never seen this before. It’s fun. It’s contextual. It’s real. You are surprised and you are delighted. Check and check.
We are memorable. A fortune on one side, your brand on the other — burned into the hearts and minds of consumers.
No one’s doing it like us. That’s the entire point.
See how we did it at Consensus Hong Kong. 🥠
