The Daily Star's Lettuce Liz campaign was one of the cultural phenomenons of 2022. It took what is a plucky, challenger UK news brand and through creative excellence, put it front and centre of the World's conversation, by asking the question; who would last longer - a store bought lettuce in a cheap wig that was being live streamed on YouTube, or Liz Truss as Prime Minister?

You'd need to have been living under a rock to not know the answer to that one.

In October 2022, the UK was on the brink; the UK’s PM’s proposed tax cuts had wreaked havoc on the country, crashing the pound and leaving Britain humiliated on the World stage.

The Editors of the Daily Star spotted an opportunity. It's long been the strategy of the Daily Star to be more fun than its more well known (and increasingly vitriolic) competitor The Sun. This, they felt, was the perfect time to demonstrate their credentials once again and build upon the PR successes the brand had achieved to date.

Building on a throw away line of copy that Liz Truss had the shelf life of the lettuce, a plan was rapidly hatched.

A social Editor was sent to the local Tescos to pick up a lettuce and within hours, a live stream was set up on YouTube and promoted across the Star's print, digital and social channels.

The idea was an absurd one; that it's ridiculous that the Prime Minister of the UK, the highest office in the country, could possibly have a shorter shelf life than a lettuce.

But it's one that aligned perfectly with the brand strategy of the Star and importantly, it was something so simple, but yet so funny that it captured people's attention the World over.

And as the media storm grew, the lettuce's fame grew with it; the lettuce was drinking soft drinks and taking Pro Plus to keep its energy up, having a nap in a sleep mask, eating tofu and flag waving in reference to Truss' colleague's reference to the whole thing being a plot by "the tofu eating wokerati".

And it worked fantastically - with the campaign spreading virally in a way that's rarely seen in brand work nowadays, whilst also being promoted across the Star's owned channels.

Insight:

Jon Clark, Editor in Chief summed up the insight best:

"We believe that we have a duty to prick the egos of people who have forgotten what their real role is – whichever party they belong to. We are not anti-Tory or anti-Labour… we are anti-idiot" - and the Liz Truss crisis was the perfect platform on which to build this campaign.

Key message:

That the UK's Prime Minister had less shelf life than a lettuce - and that the Star was willing to broadcast this point, it its own unique voice.

Target Audience:

People who want a laugh with their news, without being judged. Ultimately the 6.2m people in the UK who are strongly aligned with The Star's brand values but don't currently read us

Creation / distribution of assets:

YouTube live stream

Organic support across the Star's print, digital and social platforms

Projection on Houses of Parliament

Oct 14th 2022:

- With the pound in free fall, the Daily Star begins a YouTube livestream of a lettuce next to a photograph of PM Liz Truss

- The lettuce is also promoted on the newspaper's front page, digital and social

- Within hours the stream receives 50,000 likes, and over 350,000 viewers by the following day

Oct 18th 2022:

- The Daily Star further runs further front page entitled "Lettuce Liz on Leaf Support" (a pun on "life support")

- Global coverage grows, including the Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, Forbes, the Daily Show and many more

- Elon Musk gets in on the action calling it a "pretty good troll", with that tweet alone getting 350k likes

Oct 20th 2022:

- By the night of Truss's resignation, the lettuce has received millions of views on social

- The victorious lettuce is projected on the Houses of Parliament

PR performance:

PR reach of 1.25bn, with coverage in, amongst others:

Business Today - India, ABC news - Australia, Reuters, Swedish and Canadian TV, Fortune, Israeli TV, Fox, MSNBC, New York Times, France 24, Huffington Post, Gawker, The Daily Show, Daily Telegraph, Gawker, Yahoo, BBC, mentioned in Parliament by the leader of the opposition, tweeted about by the then World's Richest Man, Elon Musk and thousands of other individual accounts

Newspaper circulation:

On the day of Truss’ sacking, the Star’s week on week sales were up 2.4% (Audit Bureau of Circulation)

Brand Tracking:

Daily Star saw its NPS score go from -18 in September to +13 in October as a direct result of the lettuce campaign

Social media impact:

2.9m video views on Twitter and 2.3m on YouTube. 175,621 shares on the YT stream and 2.7k subscribers gained, including 1,084 alone on Oct 20th when Truss resigned.

Geo-political change:

The lettuce arguably played a direct part in the resignation of the Prime Minister of the UK

Post-lettuce:

The lettuce lived on post resignation, with bookmaker Paddy Power offering odds of 500-to-1 that the lettuce would become the next prime minister.

The Edenbridge Bonfire Society burnt an effigy of Truss and a laughing lettuce on a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night, 2022.

People around the world dressed up as a lettuce on Halloween, sharing the fun on Twitter.

The UK news industry has suffered increasingly from the polarisation of news. This has been particularly true in the tabloid news industry, which the Daily Star operates in.

The news agenda has been driven by serious, but divisive topics like Brexit, Trump and immigration - and whilst some audiences have responded well to it, others feel abandoned.

The Sun (one of the UK's leading tabloids) is one such publisher that has followed the trend. Both in terms of its shift in political poles from left to right and the change in its tone, from more jovial to outraged.

It's the readers who feel left behind by this shift that the Daily Star has been targeting, both with its wider strategy of being more fun than the Sun and with campaigns like Lettuce Liz. And based on the results shared - it's one that audiences are responding well to.