• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, September 6, 2024

Though I have never gone deep into the exploration of Dutch condiment culture, I do know that in the Netherlands, people tend to top their fries with mayonnaise. 

The fried taters look so inviting in the paper cone they’re served in, only to end up drenched in thick, eggy, white goo. (Sorry, Hellmann’s.)

No judgment, of course, but it seems like fry defilement to me.

More importantly, the un-ketchup habit does not sit well with Heinz (now Kraft Heinz), the profoundly global 150-year-old maker and distributor of the superior-tomato-based red stuff.

So, to get more “Dutchies,” as they say in the iconic brand’s new video, to switch their fry jam from mayo to pure ketchup, agency GUT Amsterdam helped Heinz create a gag product that will be distributed this weekend in Amsterdam in traditional Heinz bottles. It combines the immensely popular chocolate sprinkle-like topping used mostly on buttered bread, called hagelslag, with classic Heinz ketchup.

The result? “Hagelchup: The most Dutch ketchup ever made.”

Somehow, both hagelsag (the Dutch are said to put away more than 30 million pounds of the stuff annually) and the ketchup are Kraft Heinz products, so each is promoted via this wacky activation.

GUT created a satiric commercial about the birth of the chocolate-sprinkley-red-substance with what seems like a horseradish-like texture. It’s an over-the-top presentation, exuding a very Dutch sense of humor for the newly minted fry topping.

The commercial starts with a big build of orchestral music that suggests the opening fanfare from “2001: A Space Odyssey: Thus Spoke Zarathustra.”

So, we know that there must be something heavy happening. Then a deep-voiced narrator, speaking in lightly Dutch-accented English intones, “For decades, the Dutch have been obsessed with this thing they call hagelslag.” He continues, “They sprinkle it anytime, anywhere, for breakfast, lunch….”

He goes on, but what I found most staggering was his deeply Dutch pronunciation of “hagelslag.”

To non-Dutch speakers, the word looks like a mild-mannered three syllables, something innocent about slagging a hagel.

But when the narrator pronounces the word, it sounds like he’s hawking phlegm while surrounded by seven old men with sleep apnea snoring. It’s like a word you must stand back from. 

The campaign uses the established Heinz slogan “It has to be Heinz” but with a Dutch touch: “Even if you sprinkle it, it has to be Heinz.”

“At Heinz, it’s always our main goal to convey irrational love and put a smile on as many faces as possible,” said Belén Llamazares Carballo, the marketing director at Kraft Heinz, in a statement.

“Add an innovative surprise element with a touch of humor,” she added, “and you have the answer to the questions we asked ourselves: Hagelchup. We hope to surprise many fans during this exclusive activation, and we look forward to seeing all the happy faces after the first bite.”  

The 45-second video ends with Dutch actress Nienke Plas really nailing the choco-ketch sketch, wearing red nail polish and red lipstick, popping a delicious Hagelchup-topped fry into her mouth as she winks.

Will Hagelchup get made for real?  The experiential, video and OOH campaign seems like a long way to go for a joke. But in the interim, the chocolate flakey stuff did its bit as a gateway drug to pass the Dutchies to the all-ketchup side.