Supercell’s first-ever chief marketing officer departs

Supercell chief marketing officer Fernanda Romano has left the Brawl Stars developer after less than a year in the role.

She joined the Finnish studio in November 2023 as part of a shakeup in the company’s management structure that also saw it bring in Sara Bach as its new head of live games – recently named as its chief live games officer.

Romano was the company’s first-ever CMO, responsible for working across all titles in across the developer’s portfolio, including Supercell’s latest title Squad Busters – its first global launch since Brawl Stars in 2018.

Romano previously worked as SVP, CMO at Candy Crush Saga developer King and as CMO at flip-flop brand Alpargatas SA.

PocketGamer.biz has reached out for comment but has not heard back at the time of publication.

Key changes

Supercell has undergone a change in management structure and significant recruitment drive over the past 18 months as it shakes up its operations following the lack of a global launch for five and a half years until Squad Busters.

In his annual blog post on the state of Supercell in 2023, CEO Ilkka Paananen said the studio had planned to expand its internal teams, particularly for live ops, having previously maintained its famous small team ‘cell’ structure.

A LinkedIn post from Paananen showed the scale of those efforts. At a recent offsite, more than 600 Supercell staff were said to be in attendance.

The past year has seen Supercell’s Brawl Stars experience significant growth following key updates that added features such as Starr Drops and Hypercharge. Titles like Clash Royale and Hay Day have also seen a rise in revenue, according to AppMagic data. It should be noted, however, that these estimates do not include player spending from Supercell’s web store, which has become an increasingly significant industry trend.

Its latest global launch, Squad Busters, came with a significant marketing campaign that saw the title rack up 40 million pre-registrations and release a trailer featuring stars such Chris Hemsworth, Christina Ricci, Ken Jeong, Will Arnett, and Aulii Cravalho.

AppMagic estimates show Squad Busters has generated $76.9 million in gross revenue ($53.8m net) to date. Following a peak of $29.7m from player spending in June, revenue is estimated to have declined in each subsequent month.

For comparison, in its launch month of December 2018, Brawl Stars was estimated to have accumulated $40.3m, rising to $57.1m in January 2019. To date, the title has generated an estimated $2.5 billion from the App Store and Google Play.