After Carlos Castañeda's Passing In 2024, What Does The Future Hold For Juan Valdez? – CoffeeTalk

Juan Valdez, Colombia’s mustached coffee icon, has been a symbol of coffee culture and the country’s coffee industry since the 1960s. The icon, created by the National Federation of Coffee Growers (FNC), was created in 1959 to differentiate the brand of one of the finest mild coffees in the world from its competitors. The name was chosen based on its easy pronunciation, type of words, and enunciation of each language.

Seventy years later, advertising sectors have raised the possibility of rethinking the figure of the good-natured coffee grower and his mule. The FNC has made no public decision on its future, but the brand remains intact and is strengthened through each bag of Colombian Coffee exported and interactions with clients in 650 stores and mass consumption channels.

Veterans of the sector, such as Guillermo Trujillo, worry that there is no news on replacing Juan Valdez and keeping it alive as a value that promotes the farmer over technology. Germán Bahamón, president of the FNC, believes that a brand is more than a character, symbol, or logo; it is a set of values, experiences, and promises that an organization, product, or service projects on its target audience. However, the time seems to have come to update the features of a character that was born in the middle of the Cold War and today operates in a digital market sensitive to the impact of cultural issues on business.

The moment chosen by the FNC to leave the icon dangling in limbo is twinned with high rates of inflation, making coffee beans more expensive and consumption decreasing. More than one analyst believes this is the right time to promote the product, but the lack of information from the guild has generated uncertainty. Analyst and consultant Luis Fernando Samper, who was in charge of the FNC’s marketing division for six years, believes that the character of the coffee grower has been subjected to overexposure that has reduced interest in it.

Managing the character and the three actors who played him over 70 years has been difficult, with media often wanting to invade the privacy of the actors. José F. Duval, the Cuban son of Spanish immigrants, lasted only a year and ended his days struggling with alcoholism. Carlos Sánchez, an actor from Fredonia, played the part between 1969 and 2006, and passed away in 2018 due to a respiratory infection. Carlos Castañeda, a coffee farmer from the Andes and the last to play Valdez, passed in April of 2024.

If someone is to replace Carlos Castañeda, it must be the result of a deep reflection. There are many people in Colombia who identify with the icon, but they have to take into account that the world of the 1960s, when coffee growers were seen as very exotic figures, has disappeared.

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