Moves
- Flip the category’s emotional code
- Marketing moves into the product brief
2026 rank
Graza, rank 16
- Rival 50 Score
- 3.82
- Differentiation
- 4.3
- Relevance
- 4.3
- Talkability
- 3.62
2025: #27
Growth signalAccounted for 24% of US olive oil category growth in 2025.
Graza put olive oil in a squeeze bottle and made a precious category laugh. In mayonnaise, the squeeze bottle is everyone’s default, so the joke has to work harder.
Olive oil has always come in dark glass, dressed up with provenance and a story about a hillside in Italy. Graza put it in a bright green squeeze bottle and named it by what you do with it: Drizzle for finishing, Sizzle for cooking. It’s easy to understand, easy to use and impossible to miss on a shelf full of bottles trying to look expensive.
Underneath the bottle is a belief: cooking shouldn’t feel precious. Graza proves it with absurdist humor that makes food culture fun rather than aspirational. Its move into mayonnaise and aioli will test whether that belief can stand out in an aisle where the squeeze bottle is already standard.
Scoring
Differentiation
Score 4.3
The category default: sell olive oil on origin and grade, in packaging designed to signal luxury.
What Graza did: launched in a chef’s squeeze bottle, a first for the category, and replaced grades with two plain names based on use. As co-founder Andrew Benin put it, when they chose the squeeze bottle, “everything changed in terms of the visual appeal.”
So what: the product became its own advertisement, on every shelf and in every kitchen video. When established brands started launching squeeze bottles of their own, they only made Graza look more like the original.
Relevance
Score 4.3
The category default: premium olive oil reaches its audience through Mediterranean heritage and chef credentials.
What Graza did: became the Official Olive Oil and Mayonnaise of NASCAR in August 2026, with a trackside food truck and the “Hot Lap Test,” a campaign asking how many laps it takes for a car’s hood to get hot enough to fry an egg.
So what: NASCAR takes Graza from coastal food culture to the tailgate: grilling, feeding a crowd and cooking outside. It reaches people premium food brands usually ignore, and it introduces them to the mayonnaise at the same time.
Talkability
Score 3.62
The category default: a new condiment launches on packaging and price promotions.
What Graza did: launched mayonnaise and aioli with “Seriously Serious,” its biggest campaign so far. The deadpan spots are built around the more than 22,000 spoons it took to perfect the recipe, featuring a fictional employee who has tasted every one.
So what: the joke works because the commitment behind it is real. Graza can be playful about how it talks while being serious about the product, and that contrast is harder to copy than a bottle shape.
Our take
In olive oil, the squeeze bottle made Graza different. In mayonnaise, Graza comes in the same squeeze bottles and glass jars as everyone else on the shelf. The format that made it impossible to miss in one aisle blends in completely in the next.
That puts more weight on everything else. Without a packaging advantage, Graza’s voice and its obsession with quality have to do the work the bottle used to do. “Seriously Serious” is the right first move: it makes the product’s testing, not its packaging, the reason to choose it. NASCAR shows the humor can travel into an unlikely room without losing its tone.
The open question is whether a voice alone can carry a brand into a crowded aisle that’s bought on habit. Graza’s next challenge is to find the mayonnaise equivalent of the squeeze bottle: a truth about the product that’s as visible on the shelf as the joke is in the ads.
Marketer takeaways
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1. MAKE THE PRODUCT DO THE TALKING.
A distinctive format markets itself every time it’s used on camera.
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2. MAKE THE PROCESS THE CONTENT.
A real operational detail becomes great creative when someone dramatizes it properly.
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3. GO WHERE THE BEHAVIOR ALREADY HAPPENS.
An unexpected partnership works when the product has a credible job to do there.
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4. KNOW WHEN YOUR ADVANTAGE WON’T TRAVEL.
An idea that’s distinctive in one category can be the default in the next. Before expanding, find what will set you apart in the new aisle.
Advisor commentary
Olive oil is an elite category. Graza isn’t playing in it that way — 2026 advisor Dagmara Szulce says it’s “made olive oil feel everyday, not elite,” creating “relentless relevance.”
Dagmara Szulce Group Executive Vice President Association of National Advertisers
Reviewers’ view
Reviewers credited Graza’s squeezable olive oil and its fun, hand-drawn design, a sharp break from the category’s old-school Italian look that stands out on shelf and online. They also cited the NASCAR hot lap test and partnerships with Food Network and Talenti.