Swedish roll-up group MTG has hired former Supercell and Burger King marketeer Iwo Zakowski to lead marketing of its midcore studios.
MTG’s portfolio includes Plarium, InnoGames, Snowprint, Hutch, Ninja Kiwi and PlaySimple and the firm claims to own the largest collection of midcore studios in Europe.
Zakowski joins MTG as CMO for its midcore division, moving over from his role at Supercell as global head of marketing for live games. He spent just over three years at the Finnish firm, and prior to that was head of global brand marketing at Burger King. Zakowski has also previously worked in marketing at Danone.
“Supercell is an extraordinary company and I’ll always be grateful for my years there,” Zakowski told us. “But after a while you start thinking about what kind of challenge you want next, and the chance to take on a CMO role across a portfolio the scale of MTG’s ‘midcore district’ — with brilliant studios and the ambition to build something for the long term — was simply too compelling to pass up.”
Zakowski will now lead marketing efforts for titles including Raid: Shadow Legends, Forge of Empires and Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus. “Games with that kind of longevity and loyalty provide an amazing foundation for the continued evolution of MTG’s marketing, because the players are already there and they already care,” he added.
“My priority is to understand what’s working, where the real opportunities are, and how each studio operates. I am coming into this with an initial framework of questions rather than assumptions.”
“I’m also a firm believer that the best ideas will come from the people already doing great work across MTG’s portfolio. MTG has incredibly experienced teams, with people who are firmly entrenched in the context of their games and player communities, and my job early on is to learn before I lead.”
He added: “Each of these games has its own identity, its own community, and its own creative DNA, and the people who know their players best are the studios themselves. That’s where the real work lives. How MTG’s midcore ecosystem can best support that — without getting in the way of what makes each game special — is something I want to learn from the teams directly, not decide from the outside.”
