Member Article

Revolution Software founder tears up the marketing rule book for IoD event

Charles Cecil, managing director and co-founder of Revolution Software, has been announced the keynote speaker at this year’s Institute of Directors (IoD) black tie dinner on 19th November at the Mansion House in York.

He has been a key figure in the interactive entertainment industry for over 30 years, establishing York-based Revolution in 1990 and establishing it as one of the world’s leading adventure games developers, with a string of successful titles, all of which have been critically acclaimed and commercial hits.

This canon includes the hugely successful Broken Sword series, of which the fifth title, Broken Sword – the Serpent’s Curse, will be released later this year. Financial backing for the title was achieved by a massive crowd-funding appeal through Kickstarter. The exercise attracted 15,000 backers who pledged $850,000, allowing Revolution to self-fund its own title for the first time.

In his speech, Charles Cecil will focus on how the ‘old school’ rules of selling, marketing and distributing a product have been turned upside down by the digital revolution and how, using Broken Sword as a case study, even piracy can ultimately be beneficial.

He said, “The opportunity to distribute products digitally offers huge opportunities as well as considerable threats. With a low to zero marginal cost, the economic models we learned at school are no longer valid.

“Furthermore, social media has led to profound changes in the way that audiences accept marketing communications. People no longer accept marketing aimed at them, but instead want to pull information that interests them: it’s all about direct engagement with your audience.

“We have a hugely loyal audience who enthusiastically backed our latest Broken Sword project; some of them almost certainly pirated the first game when it launched 15 years ago. The rule books have been torn up and now we need to re-write it.”

Stephen Burwood, Chair of the IoD North Yorkshire added: “It’s an honour to welcome such a distinguished business leader as Charles Cecil to our dinner. His contribution to one of the world’s fastest growing sectors and to the Yorkshire economy is significant and I look forward to finding out more about his phenomenally successful business model.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by David Gatehouse .