Supercell expands leadership team with first CMO and new head of live games | Pocket Gamer.biz

Supercell has expanded its leadership with a new head of live games and its first ever chief marketing officer.

The Finnish developer recruited former Mojang head of games Sara Bach as its head of live games. She has worked in the industry for more than 17 years, working on titles including Battlefield, Star Wars Battlefront and Minecraft.

Ex-King CMO Fernanda Romano, meanwhile, has joined as Supercell’s own chief marketing officer. As well as her work at the Candy Crush Saga maker, Romano was also previously CMO at flip-flop brand Alpargatas SA.

“Critical” hires

“We are super excited to welcome Sara and Fernanda to Supercell,” said Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen.

“Building out the depth and breadth of our leadership team is critical in achieving our goals in our second decade and we have two of the absolute best in the industry joining us here. Sara has such deep experience of some of the world’s most iconic games franchises, across multiple genres, platforms, and geographies. She is undoubtedly the right person to lead our live games as we look to fulfill our ultimate ambition of making games that as many people as possible play for years, and that are remembered forever.

“Fernanda brings more than 20 years of experience in the games and consumer business to Supercell. As our first CMO, she’ll be working with our amazing teams to create entertaining new experiences for our existing players and reach entirely new ones.”

At the start of the year, Paananen stated in a blog post that Supercell would be expanding its internal teams, particularly for live ops, having previously maintained its famous small team ‘cell’ structure.

The move is part of a series of changes to how Supercell operates, which he called “the next chapter of Supercell”.

The company has soft-launched and beta tested a number of new titles during the past year, including the now cancelled Floodrush, Squad Busters and most recently mo.co as it searches for its next hit. Its last global release was Brawl Stars, which launched back in December 2018.