Pharma CEO Joao Adibe Marques didn’t appear on billboards or commercials to persuade Brazilians to buy his products. He instead went on a soap opera.
On a recent episode of “Fuzuê,” he played the role of a salesman at Cimed — his real company — and boasted about the benefits of vitamins to two other characters. He wore his company’s bright yellow polo shirt, a staple of his wardrobe and a constant presence on his social media feed.
It’s just one of several marketing tactics that the larger-than-life influencer has deployed to expand Cimed’s reach across Brazil’s 26 states, attending to a market of some 200 million people. He sponsors soccer teams, appears on the country’s most watched Sunday program and even rolled out a new promotional lip balm for Madonna’s concert in Rio de Janeiro. And every day, he shares nearly every aspect of his life with his 3.5 million Instagram followers.
“People follow you for what you have,” the 52-year-old executive said as he sipped a Cimed energy drink. “You don’t see any bad things on there. There are only nice things. Beautiful women, fancy watches, planes, cars. And then you start teaching how you did it, and then you engage in a different way.”
He’s built what he says is “the most digital pharmaceutical company on the planet” in part by using social media to connect with Cimed’s customers — particularly some of Brazil’s poorest, who turn to the company for below-market-cost goods that reach the country’s remotest stretches.
Behind the flurry of Instagram updates, Cimed has grown fourfold in the past six years. It has its sights set on 5 billion reais, or $974 million, of annual sales by the end of next year.
The growth and attention have made Marques — along with his sister Karla Marques Felmanas, who’s Cimed’s vice president and in charge of operations — very wealthy. The firm is wholly family-owned and is valued at $1.09 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
As investors and bankers alike wait for the equity markets to reopen for IPOs, Cimed is often mentioned among the top candidates. But Marques wouldn’t sell for now “because of the value that the market gives to pharmaceutical companies, because my model is different,” he said. “This is a company growing twice the pace of the industry.”
He said he turned down a $1 billion offer from an unidentified U.S.-based fund to buy Cimed back in 2017. His press people declined to provide additional details about the claim.
Cimed’s model has changed significantly since Marques started working as a salesman at his family’s company at the age of 15. Eventually, he persuaded his father to let him build out a distribution network in 1990. He has been CEO since 2018.
Cimed & Co — a holding company 65% owned by Marques and 35% by Karla — has 94% of the pharma company’s total shares. Their sister Mariana Zacharias Marques Barbosa, who lives in Australia and is devoted to oyster farming, has the remaining 6%. Joao Marques’ fortune is roughly $679 million, when including dividends.
Other family members are involved in the firm, too. Marques’ three oldest children, along with a niece and two nephews, work at Cimed. Joao’s and Karla’s eldest children sit on the board and in executive positions.
Under his leadership, Cimed has found a way to make selling generic medicine cool and has branched off into consumer goods like wet wipes, shampoo, lip balm, vitamins and even sex toys.
His niece, Juliana Marques Felmanas, helped create the Carmed lip balm, which targeted young girls and went viral, selling out completely at times when it launched last year. It netted an extra 500 million reais of sales for the firm. A Barbie version is on pharmacy shelves, while Marques has marketed other versions in partnerships with Burger King and Madonna’s free concert on Copacabana beach that drew 1.5 million people. The firm also launched a line of skin care products, which includes hyaluronic-acid-based rejuvenation serums and injectable fillers.
Cimed’s headquarters, in a prime tower in Sao Paulo’s Faria Lima financial district, looks more like a tech startup, with bright colors, employees working from revolving spaces, a constant buzz of visitors and transparent meeting rooms. The company has 5,500 employees, including some 1,200 salespeople, and reaches 98% of the pharmacies in the country, Marques says.
The company has “already taken some steps that are very positive for a family business that wants to do an IPO,” said Arnaldo Marques, a professor who specializes in corporate reorganizations and is not related to the family. That includes naming independent directors to the board and publishing their financial reports.
“The biggest challenge for a family business is to learn how to have partners,” he said.
Marques, ever the salesman, still goes to visit small pharmacies to speak with managers, employees and customers. When it comes to talks with banks, Jose Roberto Lettiere, a former CFO who now sits on the board and oversees M&A, said the CEO is involved in minute details like the spreads on loans.
Tan, fit, with a constant smile and a raspy voice from so much public speaking, Marques uses hyaluronic fillers to improve his image, as does his wife. He also works out for hours each morning and says the image is in part what helps him sell his products, including vitamins.
“A good salesman has high self-esteem,” he said. “You don’t want to buy from some guy who looks defeated.”
He also tries get his team to participate in what he calls “posting rituals,” in which everyone posts about a new product launch on a certain day and time.
“Boom! Five thousand people posting at the same time, look at the impact of that,” he says waving his hands. “And what’s it cost? Zero.”
If the company is publicly listed in the future, he may have to pare back his social media presence, said Marques, the university professor.
“He says he only talks about good things. But if you’re exaggerating? And how does the market take it? Especially for a publicly listed company, the market could understand that you’re selling something that doesn’t come true,” he said. “Then you have a credibility issue.”
Marques has a propensity to throw around big numbers. In a podcast in November 2023, he said he tends to round up when talking about revenue and other achievements. “Always round up,” he said.
In 2023, the company said it hit 3 billion reais in invoicing. Sales, as reported in its financial release, were 2.3 billion reais — when rounding up.
On his influencer tactics, Marques is unapologetic.
“What’s wrong with me showing my daughter on Instagram?” he said. “The simpler it is, the closer you get to people, because that’s life.”
Marques also says he’s not concerned over security, even after he was kidnapped and held for ransom for 12 days in 2000. He frequently posts his daily agenda to social media, including the times he’ll be taking off by helicopter or private plane and landing in remote towns.
Cimed’s next big endeavor is to import hyaluronic fillers from South Korea so that health professionals in Brazil could inject the product into patients at medical offices and eventually pharmacies.
When asked about exporting to other countries, he says he can’t even supply Brazil completely.
“There are few companies that know Brazil as well as we do. I know the places no one wants to go,” he says. “Generic medicines fit perfectly into the Brazil of today. Our country is very poor.”
To Marques, there’s still a lot of room to grow before considering going public.
At least three times during an interview, he said, “The grass is very high.”