WHAT JUAN VALDEZ HAS TO TEACH BRAZILIANS ABOUT ETHANOL BIOFUEL

Until the late 1950s, Brazil was arguably best-known for its coffee. The country had just won its first World Cup in 1958, in Sweden, so Brazil didn’t really figure on the global radar screen as a soccer powerhouse (the country has since gone on to win four more editions of FIFA’s world cup).

Carmen Miranda had made several appearances in Hollywood movies in the 1940s and 50s, with her tutti-frutti hat and faux-samba demeanor contributing, perhaps fatally, to building a Banana Republic image that Brazil still hasn’t shaken off entirely.

So coffee and the awe-inspiring natural beauty of Rio de Janeiro were basically all that existed, regarding Brazil, in the global consciousness.

Then, in 1959, legendary advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach came along and changed that. Hired by the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia, they concocted a fictional personage called “Juan Valdez”, who, along with his little mule Conchita, came to symbolize quality coffee in the minds of Americans and Europeans alike.

With Colombian coffee at the top of everybody’s mind, selling the product became more and more difficult for Brazilian coffee growers, and the industry in Brazil suffered considerably over the coming decades.

Today Brazil is at risk of losing the lead in the biofuels race. A diminishing number of people around the globe recognize Brazil as the only successful biofuels experience in the world.

Ernst & Young, for example, has published a “Renewable Fuels Index”, in which Brazil does not even figure among the top twenty players, lagging behind such alternative energy powerhouses as Portugal, Ireland, and Austria.

Brazil should not give up its position as the largest, most enduring, most successful biofuels experience in the world to companies with a veiled interest in making it appear that the race has just begun.

It hasn’t. It started 32 years ago in a semi-developed tropical country. While big multinationals will always have the incentive to play to their countries of origin, many of them, such as Madison Avenue's PR and advertising agencies, can be used by Brazil to publicize both its past and present experiences.

Just ask Juan Valdez.

Follow what's happening in the Brazilian ethanol market on Ethablog, the only blog in English dedicated to Brazilian ethanol.