Let’s Blend! 130 YEARS FORWARD
The 2025 Lavazza Calendar by young talent Omar Victor Diop explores the concept of blending 130 years after the company was founded
November 6, 2024
Who knows whether Luigi Lavazza imagined a hundred and thirty years ago that the Lavazza coffee blend he’d just created would go on to embody such innovative values that they would still be relevant over a century later. It was certainly his hope, because he believed that the secret of quality coffee lay in the composition of the blend, and because his visionary talent recognised the potential of coffee as a prized material that would bring the stories of millions of people together over a steaming cup of coffee.
Continuing in the vein of the last two editions of the Calendar, which focused on collaboration and inclusion, for 2025 Lavazza has chosen the ‘blend’ as the key concept driving the aesthetic approach behind the shots in the new Calendar, with creative direction by advertising agency Armando Testa. In the words of Francesca Lavazza, Lavazza Group Board Member: “With this project we want on one hand to emphasise the importance of the art of blending as a source of inspiration since 1895, but also the importance of the people who have contributed to the Group’s growth and success and are in the process of building its future. Let’s Blend – 130 years forward is a choral calendar that takes us into 2025.”
To celebrate the anniversary, Lavazza chooses to talk about the present and, above all, looks to the future by commissioning new generation talent Omar Victor Diop to produce the images in the Calendar. Diop is an extraordinarily elegant French-Senegalese artist who creates a single choral photograph in which joyful chromaticism expressing the visual vibrancy of his home culture is combined with skilful composition that references the great tradition of Renaissance painting, giving life to four tableaux vivants that celebrate the idea of the encounter and blending, adapting it according to two key concepts. The leitmotif linking the four seasons, dominated by shades of light blue, pink, green and ochre, is the counter that symbolises the place where multiple cultures and experiences come together through a shared love of coffee. The photographs, which compose a symphony of the four seasons, are populated by 36 protagonists invited from the world of Lavazza to embody certain key moments in the Group’s history.
Every triptych features a ‘talent’, a prominent personality linked to the world of Lavazza, surrounded by the protagonists chosen for the story that will lead to the celebration of a hundred and thirty years since the Company was founded.
Francesca Lavazza comments: “With the Let’s Blend project we wanted to symbolically create a great reunion, in which everyone who shares the same value finds visibility in a collective fresco made up of 36 people. The photographer, ambassadors, chefs, baristas and trainers, with the Group’s collaborators and longstanding partners… a blend with different roots, origins and roles, but all sharing Lavazza’s values and with the task of propelling them into the future.”
So, it’s in front of the endless counter of an ideal bar that a new concept of extended community is created, based on shared values, aimed at fostering the richness of difference.
Just like a blend, which in coffee brings together a mixture of original characteristics and whose result is always more than the sum of its parts, so the union of people who share the history of Lavazza – from the baristas who devote care and attention to every aspect of preparing and serving their coffee to the internationally renowned designers who develop tools and environments – contributes to defining the magic and uniqueness of a brand like Lavazza. It’s a tribute to an idea of warm humanity that weaves relationships between equals and believes in knowhow and contamination, a humanity that welcomes the other and broadens its horizons, recognising the extraordinary value of every person.
The images for the twelve months of the Calendar form a narrative that unfolds as if in a single long take and tells multiple different micro-stories, the “molecules” that make up a larger collective story.
Jannik Sinner, Massimiliano Caiazzo, Whoopi Goldberg, Tullio Solenghi, Big Mama, Omar Victor Diop, Sara Gama and Omar Hassan appear alongside Ambassadors Daniela Fatarella General Manager Save the Children Italy, designer Cino Zucchi and Chefs Norbert Niederkofler, Federico Zanasi and Chiara Pavan. These famous names are featured with Lavazza people, with professionals including coffee specialists, baristas, trainers and even Luigi, the friendly robot in the Pleasure Makes us Human Global Campaign, who represents the more futuristic side but is also rich in Brand sentiments. The triptychs, which are compositions of carefully selected objects with a precise meaning, like clues in an intriguing treasure hunt, expound the concepts of Blending Times, which brings together personalities of different generations, Blending Roots, in which each subject showcases their different origin, Blending Cultures, a mixology of different traditions and cultures, and lastly Blending Minds, where complementary attitudes, skills and professions are mixed together. They are people who work in different fields and express themselves in art, sport, culture, business, gastronomy and innovation, all areas where Lavazza has an active role to play.
Blending is therefore a “kind of foundational word in the Lavazza dictionary”, says Michele Mariani, executive creative director at Armando Testa Group, who also explains that “we thought it was important and interesting to underscore this concept. Talking about blending today highlights a major value at a time in which the world seems a little more problematic, a little more arid and often unmindful of differences. So, the invitation to collaborate, share and coexist is now more than a desire, it’s a necessity”.
Following in the footsteps of the 2024 Calendar – More than Us – with images by African photographers Thandiwe Muriu, Daniel Obasi and Aart Verrips, the new Calendar by Omar Victor Diop showcases Africa’s centrality as a continent of innovation, no longer ‘emerging’ but now a group of countries and cultures in great ferment. A symbolic place of the utmost importance for the Group. “Africa is a place of identity,” says Francesca Lavazza, “because it’s the original home of the coffee bean (the Kafa region of Ethiopia) but also a continent of harmony, bursting with energy, experimentation and belief in the future. All values in line with Lavazza’s DNA. With its natural wealth, Africa is also the stage for a number of sustainable development projects by the Lavazza Foundation, through which Lavazza Group aims to turn coffee into a huge opportunity for producer countries: a high-quality product for prosperous communities that respect and protect the environment in the framework of long-term sustainable development”.
With the 2025 Calendar, Lavazza is continuing its advocacy of responsible business practices and universal values. An international Group with over 5,500 people, Lavazza puts the values of sustainability and inclusion at the centre of its growth, moving
forward with the mission it embraced 130 years ago, in which people and the environment are now the true protagonists. Connected, to create something precious together.
CREDITS
Supervision & Coordination: Luigi Lavazza S.p.A.
Francesca Lavazza, Member of Board
Luigino Finelli, Creative Content Production Manager
Photographer: Omar Victor Diop
Creative Project: Armando Testa S.p.A.
Executive Creative Director: Michele Mariani
Creative Directors: Andrea Lantelme, Gabriella De Stefano, Paolo Fenoglio
Graphic Designer: Michela Repellino
Digital Graphic Designer: Beatrice Mezzocolli
Project Manager: Gina Graci
Digital Client Service: Francesca Romaldo
Production Advisor & Talent Management: The Producer International
Production Company: The Box Films
Executive Producer: Federico Levizzani
Producer: Maria Elena Amatulli
Photo dpt.
Light Director: Estelle Chauffour
Digit Tech: Cesare Maragnano, Nicholas Beutler, Andrea Mariniello
Retoucher: Marine Woehl
Set Designer: Stefano Grossi
Stylist: Giuseppina Maurizi
Stylist BigMama: Cristian Lorenzoni
Stylist Massimiliano Caiazzo: Ramona Tabita
Make Up Artist: Fulvia Bartoli
Hair Stylist: Antonella Muggeo
Groomer – Londra @OneRepresents: Sarah Whiteside
Hair and Make Up BigMama: Serena Polh
Hair Stylist Whoopi Goldberg: Diarra Sidibe
Make Up Artist Whoopi Goldberg: Renata Di Leone
Film-maker: Mattia Ruggeri
Special Thanks:
Renata Rinaldi – Lavazza Group Creative Content and Brand Image Department
Chiara Barlassina – The Producer International
Carlo Sgarzi – Red Joint Film
