CMO Olga Osminkina-Jones shares how the butter-substitute brand snagged celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay as the face for the brand’s new campaign featuring its reformulated product.

Consumers need to reappraise I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, said Olga Osminkina-Jones, Chief Marketing Officer at Flora Food Group, which owns the brand.

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter has been around for decades but its last memorable marketing campaign featured actor Fabio Lanzoni in the 1990s.

“There was a moment of, let’s call it a less dynamic moment for the brand in the marketplace, and we were silent at times,” Osminkina-Jones said.

Plus, within the past two decades, the consumer sentiment around food has shifted. Consumers are less focused on low-calorie foods (An audience I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter catered to) and are more focused on quality calories in their culinary choices, Osminkina-Jones said.

To that end, the brand took 11 months to reformulate its product, and in January 2026 I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter relaunched its product to now include Vitamins A, D, E and B12. The aim is to offer a butter substitute that is both lower in calories and has good nutrition.

“It was important for us to make sure that our proposition and its evolution are understood to be very much fit for the modern world,” Osminkina-Jones said.

Gordon Ramsay is now a brand ambassador for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter

After formulating the new product, next up is marketing it. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter wants to return to those “glory years” of when Fabio was its spokesperson but now it needs credibility both in the modern culture and in the culinary world, the chief marketer said.

The not-butter brand sent its new product to chef Gordon Ramsay to try in hopes of forming a partnership. The thought was, if the notoriously skeptical chef approved and promoted I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, other doubting consumers who otherwise would not have considered cooking with a butter substitute may reappraise the brand too.

“All of it had to come authentically to the consumer, to the market, because if it’s not authentic, it truly is not worth it,” she said.

Ramsay decided to engage with the brand and is now the face of the product launch. The campaign launched in January, featuring Ramsay skeptically trying the product himself and approving of it in his typical brash fashion. The campaign also features recipes that Ramsay created using the product.

Osminkina-Jones declined to share the financial structure of the relationship, but emphasized that it is a “true partnership” and Ramsay’s enthusiasm for the product is authentic.

Consumers Engage With New Campaign

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter launched the product and campaign in January. So far, consumers have responded positively according to the brand:

• Brand sentiment improved by approximately 1,000 basis points.
• The social content is driving nearly 3x higher engagement rates versus typical branded food content.
• The Gordon Ramsay-specific content is delivering media efficiency at roughly 30–35% lower cost per thousand impressions than category benchmarks.

“We are definitely looking at a number of metrics that are all laddering up to the concept of reappraisal, really seeing how consumers relate with the new benefits that the product offers,” Osminkina-Jones said.

This particular campaign will run for a few months, and the brand will continue to announce more product news. The aim is for the reformulated product to be the cornerstone of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’s next chapter of growth.

“This is not just about an ad campaign. This is truly an in-culture integration over the course of the year,” Osminkina-Jones said.