Todd Broder: Building on experience

Todd Broder has a golden nugget of advice for younger people in the industry: “Don’t ghost people. There’s no excuse not to get back to someone.” 

Raised in Louisville Kentucky, the affable founder of 21-year-old production company BroderVille credits his parents with teaching him the importance of being polite and considerate. “You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room as long as you make everybody feel special,” he says.

Broder is living proof that charm combined with boldness pays off. He turned up in New York at the end of the ‘90s to study animation. Towards the end of his course - without overthinking it, which he attributes to “naivete” - he contacted Fred Seibert, President of MTV Networks Online. “He’d given a talk to 100 students at our school and I was captivated by him. I figured out his email address, contacted him, and he invited me in for a 15-minute meeting and introduced me to some producers. Next thing? I became an animator on SpongeBob SquarePants.”

You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room as long as you make everybody feel special.

It turned out to be his big break but Broder was initially a touch sceptical. “This was in 1999, when SpongeBob was just coming out. And I thought: ‘I'm not sure if I understand this show...,’” he laughs.

Above: SpongeBob SquarePants – the show Broder worked on despite thinking, “I'm not sure if I understand this show...”

Broder soon realised that a career in animation wasn’t for him. “I was OK,” he concedes, “but I could see there were much more skilled animators than me. Animation is very monotonous. It’s not for my type of brain!” Instead, he realised his strengths lay in producing. “I pivoted my thinking because I like working in a team. I don’t want to be stuck in a cubicle or a cog in the wheel.”

In 2001, he launched BroderVille, securing MTV as an early client. That led to more work with other Viacom-owned networks including VH-1. The advent of reality TV at the dawn of the millennium meant Broder was often brought in to work on shows featuring real people as well as branded content projects. He recalls: “I would direct lifestyle shows on the Food Network, the Discovery Channel and HTV. It helped me as a producer and a director: real people are wanted in a lot of spots. We’ve just shot for The Guardian and it was a stunt that was half activation and half content with man-on-the-street interviews.” 

 If you want to survive in an expensive city, you have to hustle. I thrive off that.

Look at Broder’s work and you can see that experience stands him in good stead for work with brands such as McDonald’s in Canada. The commercial, through Cossette in Toronto, captures the surprised reactions of people who can see their orders being prepared thanks to a transparent kitchen.   

Speaking from New York, Broder sports a chocolate brown NY-branded baseball cap, one sign of his adoration for his adopted home state. “I’ve been in New York for 29 years and I still love it. Everybody is hustling. You have no choice: if you want to survive in an expensive city, you have to hustle. I thrive off that.”

Above: Experiences the team brought to life for Crayola and Owala.

The Power Pivot

Over the last decade, Broder has steered his company towards experiential work versus commercials. What was behind the shift? “My philosophy is that people aren’t watching TV as much and advertisers have to figure out ways to reach people. I love TV, but the reality is that our kids aren’t watching it.”

Broder was quick to see the combined power of IRL events and social media: make the experience worthy of sharing and people will organically share it, driving brand awareness and reach. “We got into it nine years ago and we were at the right place at the right time. In the past two years, the influx of calls coming in are now 70 percent experiential to 30 percent content. We’re getting calls from around the country: brands are seeing the ROI and spending less than they would on airtime.”

Every generation is now on social, and would rather hear about a new water bottle from an organic social post than see it on a commercial.

BroderVille’s experiential showreel boasts some impressive names: Guinness, adidas, Crayola, Philips. There are also some less well-known brands. Owala, a stylish water bottle brand, took over Oculus Plaza in New York City in September 2025 with Owalafylt. Created with The Martin Agency, Richmond, this included interactive games such as mini golf and a human claw that dangled people above a ball pit to pick up a free water bottle and other prizes. It generated 10,000 impressions. “There were thousands of people queuing down three New York City blocks. That made the CEO happy, which made me happy,” smiles Broder. “Every generation is now on social, and would rather hear about a new water bottle from an organic social post than see it on a commercial.”

Above: Verizon Arcade Unplugged, featuring life-sized analogue takes on digital games, created for the Global Day of Unplugging.

BroderVille also created Verizon Arcade Unplugged, an immersive family-friendly experience for the telco and The Brooklyn Brothers in New York to mark the Global Day of Unplugging in March. Broder’s eight-year-old daughter and her friends attended, enjoying life-sized analogue versions of digital games. “Experiential is only going to get bigger and bigger,” predicts Broder. “because everybody’s advertising on social.” He also thinks that declining budgets are encouraging clients to become more mindful of their investments. “Because of AI, budgets will keep coming down,” he says.

Companies and agencies need solutions. They don’t care whether directors are signed to you or not.

BroderVille works with a group of freelance directors as opposed to nurturing an exclusive roster, which means that its core team comprises six full-time staff. The BroderVille team numbers will vary according to what’s needed: a current experiential commission for KitchenAid, which involves building a restaurant to demo a new oven to influencers, has a team of 15 working on it, while Owala required 50 people.

“Companies and agencies need solutions. They don’t care whether directors are signed to you or not,” he says. “We have more than 100 freelance directors to call upon so we’re typically able to put up multiple directors for a brief. In experiential work, they don’t care about the director at all. It’s more about our portfolio and whether we’ve built something before, or if we’re a trusted vendor who knows what permit to get for Times Square.”