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

创意是什么Make the ad itself the solution: print a face on a newspaper page and tell readers to wrap lettuce in it — newspaper wrapping keeps lettuce fresh, so the medium saves it.伤筋动骨

当时的题目

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.

它是怎么成立的

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.

妙在哪

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.

做出来什么

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.

可以借走的

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.

后来

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.

资料来源

发现哪里写错了？告诉我们。

轮到你了

你刚读完一个点子。把你手上的题目说出来，看看谁接过同样的题。

免费账号 · 3 次免费提问 · 不用绑卡