The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2023–2024
Cook Do turns a newspaper page into lettuce-wrapping paper — Spikes Media Grand Prix
Ajinomoto prints a full-page face in a Nagano newspaper and tells readers to wrap lettuce in it: the preservation trick and the ad become the same act.
Ajinomoto · Cook Do
What it had to solve
Lettuce is a beloved Japanese vegetable, yet households often let a head wilt before it's finished, feeding Japan's food-waste problem. Ajinomoto's Cook Do oyster sauce needed a way into lettuce meals, and Nagano — Japan's No.1 lettuce-producing prefecture — was the natural stage.
How it works
In June 2023, the Shinano Mainichi Shimbun in Nagano carried a front page unlike any other: actor Tatsuya Fujiwara's face filled the paper under the title 'Lettuce Preservation Newspaper'. The joke was the instruction — wrap your lettuce in this page and refrigerate it, a traditional Japanese storage trick that stops the leaves drying out.
The ad was Ajinomoto's push for Cook Do oyster sauce, built around the 'Instant Disappearing Lettuce' recipe: blanched lettuce topped with oyster sauce and sesame oil, a dish JA Zennoh Nagano officially endorsed. Because Nagano is Japan's largest lettuce-producing region, the local paper was the perfect stage for a preservation joke.
The idea worked because the medium did the work: instead of merely claiming the sauce makes lettuce delicious, the ad gave readers a reason to keep lettuce longer and a way to eat it fast, reducing food waste in the same move. Social media picked the paper up and the campaign went viral.
A second edition followed in October 2023, printing lettuce farmers' faces on the Jomo Shimbun and Ibaraki Shimbun, and selling lettuce actually wrapped in the pages at farm stands in Gunma and Ibaraki. Dentsu and Ajinomoto took the Media Grand Prix at Spikes Asia 2024, and the work also won a gold in the newspaper category at the 77th Dentsu Advertising Awards.
Why it lands
- The medium is the message: the newspaper page itself is the preservation tip, so the ad and the advice are inseparable.
- It picked the right local stage — Nagano, Japan's No.1 lettuce region — so readers were the people who actually wrap and store lettuce.
- It paired a product push with a genuinely useful behavior change (less food waste), which is why people shared it instead of skipping it.
- The absurd full-page face made the wrapper photogenic, turning a print buy into free social-media reach.
What it did
The ad went viral on social media, and the recipe became a genuine hit. A second edition in October 2023 printed lettuce farmers' faces on newspapers in Gunma and Ibaraki and sold lettuce wrapped in the paper at farm stands as 'vegetables with too-visible farmer faces'. The campaign won the Media Grand Prix at Spikes Asia 2024.
What you can take
Let the medium carry the benefit: when the print ad itself is the preservation tip — wrap lettuce in newspaper — reading the ad and using the product become one shared act.
Since then
The Lettuce Preservation Newspaper became a franchise. Phase two ran in October 2023 with farmer-faced pages in Gunma and Ibaraki, farm-stand sales of wrapped lettuce, and a recipe site built with KADOKAWA's Lettuce Club. The campaign won the Media Grand Prix at Spikes Asia 2024 and a gold at the 77th Dentsu Advertising Awards, and it remains the reference point for Japanese print ads that are also functional objects — proof that a newspaper buy can be a product, not just a message.
Sources
- 味の素／Cook Do® オイスターソース — ブレーン（電通の仕事）
- 【ヤバい】SNSが震えた『レタス保存用新聞』をゲット！
- SNSを震撼させた「レタス保存用新聞」第2弾が登場 →生産者の顔が見えすぎてヤバい
- 生産者の顔が見えすぎる！？ SNSで話題を呼んだ「#レタス瞬間消滅運動」第2弾実施
- Spikes Asia announces 2024 winners including the Special Awards and Young Spikes Competition winners
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