Fernando Gracia

In Search of Juan Valdez: the Juan Valdez Marketing Campaign and the Construction of Colombian Identity Fernando Gracia

In 1959, Juan Valdez introduced the world to 100% Colombian Coffee. This fictional image, designed by the New York based advertisement agency Doyle Dane Bernbach in conjunction with the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia (National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia), represents the Federation itself and over 500,000 coffee growing families. The National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia was created in 1927 to unite the Colombian coffee-growing regions under one agency in order to protect Colombian coffee in foreign markets, specifically in that of the United States. About 30 years after its creation, however, the Federation ran into the problem of not having a foreign marketing campaign. With the introduction of Juan Valdez, the Federation and its product were able to distinguish itself from the products of other countries. The campaign not only created a coffee brand, but also a country brand with Juan Valdez as its representative. The image has been extremely popular and so successful among U. S. consumers that it was chosen as the most publicly recognized icon by Advertising Week in 2005.