Google Recommends Olive Oil as Butter Substitute to 40M Oscars Viewers

In a com­mer­cial for its Home device, Google told an esti­mated 40 mil­lion view­ers of the Academy Awards last night that olive oil can be a sub­sti­tute for but­ter in cook­ing.

For every cup of but­ter, sub­sti­tute three-quar­ters cup of olive oil.- Google Home Commercial

“Okay Google, what’s a good sub­sti­tute for but­ter?” a man asks in the 15-sec­ond spot that aired through­out the four-hour Oscars broad­cast.

“For every cup of but­ter, sub­sti­tute three-quar­ters cup of olive oil,” the Google device responds, offer­ing a con­ver­sion that takes into account the dif­fer­ence in den­sity of the two fats.

After a pause, the man then asks, ​“Okay Google, what’s a good sub­sti­tute for olive oil?” (Maybe the uncon­scionable absence of olive oil in the man’s kitchen is due to this year’s over-pub­li­cized olive oil short­age scare.) That ques­tion, how­ever, seems to leave even Google speech­less, as the com­mer­cial cuts away. After all, there really is no sub­sti­tute for olive oil.

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While such a pass­ing ref­er­ence might not be note­wor­thy for some indus­tries, the high-pro­file men­tion can be seen as a wel­come prod­uct plug for the olive oil sec­tor which has been try­ing to get peo­ple to con­sider olive oil as a health­ier option well-suited for cook­ing.

Unlike some sec­tors, olive oil has no con­certed pro­mo­tional cam­paigns that could reach such a world­wide audi­ence. And even if it did, the sim­plic­ity of Google’s inci­den­tal plug would be hard to beat.

And when most men­tions of olive oil these days tend to be on the neg­a­tive side, the Google spot rests the brand’s stel­lar cred­i­bil­ity behind one uncom­pli­cated truth: you can use olive oil instead of but­ter for cook­ing.

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