Editor's Note:

Hello, welcome to this special issue of Luye Discovery. In this issue, our colleague Marcos de Paula from Luye Pharma Brazil will showcase the mysterious Latin American culture to us, share Luye's operations in Latin America with us, and tell us his stories at Luye and his insights about some significant topics.

Let's listen to Marcos' stories along with the romantic Bossa Nova.(click the above button)
 

 
Guest: Marcos de Paula, Commercial Manager, Latin America, Luye Pharma international

A Brief Introduction to Marcos

• Marcos is responsible for the sales of Luye products in 18 countries of LATAM. He used to work at his personal office from where he has contacts with the main stakeholders (Partners, Specialists and Luye team). Because of the Covid-19 he is working remotely.
   
• Marcos is Brazilian, he lives close to São Paulo with his wife and three daughters
   
• Marcos holds a Bachelor of Pharmacy-Biochemistry degree at a local University (Unesp- top 10 Latam) and a Master’s in Administration and Marketing. His professional background is based on Marketing, Sales and BD area.

Luye Pharma （international）Team in China

Culture overview of LATAM

Latin America is a mysterious place for various reasons. Mentioning this place, the first things coming to mind would be the animated film Rio in addition to samba, soccer, tropical rain forest…These are all fascinating things. How about the local cultures in Latin America? And how has Luye been able to build rapport with the emerging international markets?

Let’s go with Marcos！
 

Latam countries are not homogeneous, there are many differences among them, however, generally speaking, I can say Latam is highly influenced by local population which arrived here thousands of years ago and by some European and African countries that have started to arrive here in the XV century. As a result, Latam people speaks European languages, which the main are Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, Dutch, and hundreds of Indian languages. We incorporated many words, foods and cultural aspects from the local population (people who arrived here before the Europeans). For instance: in some countries like Paraguay, Mexico and Peru the peoples look like physically to the local populations, others like Argentina and Uruguay are more similar to the European ones. Brazil is a mixed. Regarding to Brazil, the best definition would be a melting pot. Based on historically migration we were built by local people, Portuguese and African (from XVI century) and Europeans (Italian, Japanese, German, Spanish from XIX century). The biggest Italian descendants outside Italy (25 million) and Japanese descendants outside Japan (1.6 Million) are located in Brazil, so it can show a little bit about the immigration relevance for shaping our identity. I want to share some specific interesting points about Latam especially Brazil.
 

• Brazil has the biggest biodiversity in the world, we have different kinds of landscapes, rain forecast (more than 50% of total world biodiversity), deserts, grasslands and others specific vegetations.
   
• Latam people is social media heavy users according to the below graph. We use to spend more than 3h a day on social media.

• The name Brazil came from brazilwood, a very common tree from the time when the Europeans arrived. The term for the brazilwood tree in Portuguese, pau-brasil, is derived from brasa (ember), a reference to the dark red color, formed from medieval Latin brasa, from Old French brese, "ember, glowing charcoal", in turn from Frankish *brasa (below picture ).

Business Overview of LUYE in LATAM

Luye is expanding its international presence through acquiring products, companies and launching its portfolio and pipeline. Latam is a key part of that strategy since that regional has a good share of growth expectation for the next years. Nowadays we have Seroquel (treatment for schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder) in 18 countries and we just signed agreement with local partners for the main countries: Brazil, Mexico, 9 countries in the Central America and shortly Argentina. Our partner in Brazil and Mexico are exploring digital strategies to communicate with the doctors since many Latam countries are under quarantine. Latam markets generate USD 30 million annual sales. At the same time, we are negotiating to launch new products (Rivastigmine Patch – treatment for Alzheimer, Fentanyl and Buprenorphine patch – (treatment for Severe pain), LY03004 (treatment for schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder), LY03005 (treatment for Depression).

More interview conversations：

What kind of career path have you experienced before joining LUYE?
My integration with the pharmaceutical area started in 2001 when I started to study pharmacy. Later I started to work on the Marketing area at Boehringer Ingelheim when I could understand the relevance of strategically thinking and long-term view. After that I joined EMS, the biggest Brazilian Pharmaceutical company, when I could experience sales and management role. I used to be Business head of Oncology and Hospital area. In parallel I used to teach Marketing at University. In September, 2018 I joined Luye as Latam commercial manager to drive the Seroquel business and support my boss, Michael Scully, on that strategy.

What interested you the most about your current position as a Commercial Manager?
I think to reconcile execution with the strategy is one relevant topic. As commercial manager I am engaged on building the strategy with Luye team and I can see implementation in real time locally. It is crucial because one of the most issues we can see in every business is the disconnection between planning and execution and here I can gather both.

Another point is to strengthen my International business knowledge since I can learn from our Luye team who are specialists is different areas and countries. It helps to broad my business mindset.

In addition, the support I have from my leaders is great, I think we are able to balance the management by results and caring of people. During the COVID time this situation were clearer than ever and I think Luye and the International team are doing a good job. I want to emphasize my boss (Michael Scully) on that because he is skillful to handle it.

The last and most important, we have the honor and responsibility to start from almost the beginning which is highly motivational and we have the opportunity to create a legacy. It is my personal motivation driver.

Team in the Great Wall in China

How do your team (LUYE PHARMA INTERNATIONAL) collaborate?
The business is highly integrated due to the complexity and the relevance of the Latam market, so we depend on each other a lot. Every Luye colleague has relevance and adds value on the discussions, actually we are building together.

For example: in order to sign any agreement, we need to discuss with many areas: B Business Development, Marketing, Finance, Regulatory, Supply chain, Legal, Commercial, Pharmacovigilance, Project manager, Quality… in other words, we need to engage basically all the Luye international colleagues to make the most rational decision. This process takes a long time because we need to handle local requirement, partners, Luye and some external consultants.
Every day I have interactions (WeChat, zoom calls) with Luye team including my boss, Michael Scully. It helps a lot because it guarantees a more effective progress and communication.

So, persistence and integration are key words in that kind of scope.
 

What is your work style and ideal team culture?
I think the best asset that every company have is the people. They are responsible to transform vision into reality, to shape the market, to create new solutions and to become the current status quo more efficient. Given that belief and as a consequence I try to have a team work approach. So, I use to understand different perspectives and take it in consideration for business decisions. Other topic is the focus on results (short and long term), I try to make the efforts pretty aligned with the Luye objectives. I use to work with Kanban tool. I do not believe on ideal team culture concept as a fixed mindset because different regions, busines model and timing requires different approaches but generally speaking I think a good team culture should be based on stimulation on innovation, recognition on key achievements and open communication. 

(left)Marcos participating LUYE’s 25th Anniversary celebration in Yantai, China
(right) Out-door activitiy of the team

Please share with us a memorable project you have led
I think the promotional agreement for Brazil is a good example for some reasons:
1) Brazil is one of the biggest countries for Seroquel business;
2) We needed to have a strong resilience on that process. We finalized the terms in 2019 but the local partner gave up in the last minute due to its internal strategy change, as a consequence we lost a lot of time. Immediately we started to make progress with other partners and could finally sign the new agreement in 2020.

This project is very important to Luye because it opened the Latam doors for future projects.
I want to emphasize that this achievement was built by every international Luye colleague as I pointed out earlier.

Pleases share a story relating to Covid-19.
When the COVID-19 hit China our Hospital Luye business colleagues asked me to help them to find some suppliers to export gloves and masks to Luye. I used my local network and I found some partner who started to negotiate with Luye team. Since the majority of suppliers did not have stock available due to the big Chinese demand, I had to contact dozens of distributors. The biggest Brazilian newspaper discovered my effort on that direction and contacted me to understand the process. I told I was not authorized to be interviewed, so they published a note saying Luye was looking for some suppliers. It was the first Luye mentioning in a Brazilian newspaper. To sum up, I put big efforts to add value and contribute to our Chinese colleagues.

Another interesting story, during the pandemic issue, I started to help, as a volunteer, the school where my daughters attend classes. It is a Waldorf school which uses its profit to maintain itself. All the parents are associated to the school and many of them are volunteers. The school created a crisis committee to cope with the issue, and I started to contribute with them thru my business experience in that field. It is a splendid experience when you are engaged in such a different area. You can bring some benchmarks and learn from other perspective, e.g. sociocracy decision process. 

What’s the biggest challenge of your current job? And how do you overcome?
My biggest challenge is to be effective in such markets with strong competitors (Brazil has almost 20 generics). It is true specially during the pandemic which speeded up a trend in terms of how to interact with doctors (from face-to-face to virtual). To overcome that situation, we chose partners (local Pharmaceutical companies) who have strong capabilities and good relationship with the doctors in place. At the same time, Luye team is supporting the local partners to move ahead thru sharing our international experience and insights. From my side, I contribute with my local expertise and coordination with local Astra Zeneca, which is part of that business as well. Few weeks ago, our partners in Mexico and Brazil have started to explore the virtual tools (e-meetings, e-detailing). In June we launched the campaign “We care about mental health” created by Luye APAC team which aims to emphasize the mental health awareness. We organized an e-meeting in Mexico which impacted more than 1000 doctors. It was a successful marketing strategy. We invited a Spanish psychiatry who faced the COVID issue in Madrid and he could share his experience and insights to the Mexican doctors. Those actions will contribute to build our reputation and strengthen the Seroquel brand in Latam. It is just the beginning! 

 
Luye Pharma and partners launch the “We Care About Mental Health” initiative

Closely followed the Asia Pacific, Latin America team had launched a similar campaign “We Care About Mental Health”
and achieved encouraging response and very positive results.

What’s your thoughts about the global development of LUYE? What are the new opportunities and challenges in LATAM?
Luye has a good portfolio and amazing pipeline which will drive the corporation to a good position globally. Luye decided to invest first in incremental innovation (new formulations Patch and long acting injectable for well stablished molecules) in the two core areas: Oncology and Central Nervous System. This approach is appropriate because it mitigates the risks and brings a faster cash generation.

The pharmaceutical sector is shifting from small molecules products to biologic and personalized medicine products. This changes the way of doing business because those new complex products bring new approaches and concepts. Therefore, the pharma industry must pay more attention to patient access, multi stakeholders’ approach, high R&D investments and risks and, obviously, the company reputation will be more important than ever. Those changes will be amplified by the digital transformation. Curiously, regarding to digital transformation the pharma industry is in a good position in some areas but there is a huge gap in customers and suppliers’ interactions. Those finds were published by MCKINSEY GLOBAL INSTITUTE (picture below). Here it is the challenge and opportunity: to engage the customers/clients more efficiently thru digital transformation.

Internal digitalization will bring benefits as you can optimize the operations and get market insights.

How do you spend your weekends? Do you have any interesting hobbies?
Before the pandemic I used to play soccer and volleyball and travel to some closer places since my relatives live in other cities. Since March I have been spending more time with my daughters, since they like to walk on the street, play soccer at home, watch movies and draw.
 

Marcos with his family-He has three daughters
 (5 years old, 4 years old and 3 months old)

I am studying innovation thru attending e-meetings, reading books, surfing on the internet and mainly discussing this topic thru benchmark meetings. I am really excited about this topic since they can provide a different way of thinking and it is highly connected to the future trends.

（above）Marcos has won the Culture Star Award for Customer Orientation of LUYE 
（below）LUYE Pharma (international) team with LUYE management

Concluding Remarks
At Luye, our colleagues are from different countries and cultures. The good thing is that, while Luye is expanding internationally, they themselves are also growing. Yes, when we are turning the page courageously with a vision for the future, we are actually just getting started!