A beautiful moustache, a sombrero, a poncho over his shoulders… Juan Valdez is a fictitious character created in 1960 to serve as the emblem of « Café de Colombia ». Known the world over, this friendly, smiling cafetero, straight from the imagination of advertisers, has also been embodied in flesh and blood for over fifty years by an actor. This advertising icon, with incredible longevity, has helped sell coffee made in Colombia to the four corners of the globe. In recent years, « Juan Valdez » has also lent his image to a chain of coffee shops.
The standard-bearer for Colombian coffee
Juan Valdez was born in the late 1950s. At that time, the Colombian coffee industry was suffering from a serious crisis due to a global oversupply, and the powerful National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia (Fedecafé) organized a competition among several major international advertising agencies.
Objective: to develop a communications strategy demonstrating that Colombian coffee, through its production process and its quality, is quite simply… the best in the world! The American advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) won the contract in 1959 and came up with… the character of Juan Valdez, as the standard-bearer for Colombian coffee. Juan Valdez, don’t you see? He’s this Colombian peasant with a beautiful moustache, wearing a poncho over his shoulder and a white panama hat… On the« Café de Colombie » logo, Juan Valdez is always accompanied by his inseparable mule Conchita, and in the background, the Colombian Andes stand out.
As early as 1960, an advertisement featuring Juan Valdez appeared in the prestigious New York Times. The text« El café de Colombia se tomó a Nueva York » (Colombian coffee is drunk in New York) was accompanied by a photo of the friendly, smiling cafetero. The success of this marketing operation was immediate, first in the United States, then in the rest of the world, to the extent that, seventy years later, the popular Juan Valdez is still the emblem of coffee made in Colombia.
An exceptional longevity for an advertising image, to say the least. In Colombia, the character may even be as famous as Shakira today! This advertising campaign is considered by communications specialists to be one of the most effective advertising strategies for promoting a product – in this case, coffee – that many thought difficult to differentiate.
From fiction to reality
But this international advertising icon does exist in the flesh! Juan Valdez has been portrayed in countless TV and poster ads, first by Cuban-born American actor Jose F. Duval. Then it was the legendary Carlos Sanchez, a Colombian coffee grower, who played Juan Valdez from 1969 until his retirement in 2006, after thirty-seven years of loyal service!
When it came to finding a new Juan Valdez, after the departure of Carlos Sanchez, the casting was worthy of a James Bond movie! A meticulously-written « Juan Valdez guide » defined the character’s characteristics in precise terms: « a hard-working peasant, humble but persevering despite a hostile nature, attached to his family and his village ».
Nearly 400 candidates were shortlisted. And it was Colombian Carlos Castañeda, from Andes (Antioquia department), 120 km from Medellín, who was declared the winner, convincing the jury because he represented the « stereotype of the Colombian coffee grower »: « a good family man, involved in the political life of his locality and a small landowner ». Today, it’s up to him to symbolically represent the country’s 500,000 cafeteros and, above all, to promote Colombian coffee around the world.Juan Valdez has come a long way since he was born, carrying a smartphone in his pocket: he’s very connected, with his own blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts. He still features on the logos of some 3,500 Colombian coffee brands. This logo identifies products containing 100% Colombian coffee and approved by the National Federation of Colombian Coffee Producers.
In 2005, « Café de Colombia » even acquired the status of an appellation of origin in Colombia, making it the first non-European Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) to be registered in the European Union. The image and name of Juan Valdez have also been intensively exploited by « Café de Columbia » in recent years. « Juan Valdez » gave birth to a Colombian coffee chain, created in 2002 by the Federation of Coffee Growers to compete with Starbucks.
Today, the Colombian growers’ company has around a hundred establishments, in South America of course, but also in New York, Spain, Malaysia and South Korea…The Juan Valdez coffee chain: www.juanvaldezcafe.com TheNational Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers: www.federaciondecafeteros.org
Text by Edouard Seghur
