If an idea does not keep you awake at night worrying it is too weird or too big, it probably doesn’t belong on Netflix. That’s the creative mandate driving Tony Broderick, director of marketing for Netflix ANZ, as he fights for subscriber attention in a fiercely competitive streaming market.
Broderick recently shared his time with Mediaweek for our CMO Spotlight to discuss taking ‘uncomfortably exciting’ creative swings, how artificial intelligence speeds up the creative process, and why the brand’s personalised billboard is its most powerful asset.
Creating cultural moments at scale
Mediaweek: What piece of work from the past 12 months best captures how your brand wants to show up?
Tony Broderick: Wednesday Island. We took over Cockatoo Island, once a prison and reformatory for young female convicts, and transformed it into an outcast fan festival. It had everything: a star-studded red carpet, Gaga-esque performances, and immersive Nevermore activations that felt like a fever dream.
What I love most isn’t just the scale; it’s that our local and regional teams in Events, Publicity, Marketing, and Social moved as one single organism to pull it off. Seeing thousands of Aussie Wednesday fans celebrate their outcast energy together was also pure joy. Plus, it happened on the only day it didn’t rain last August. I spent two weeks obsessively checking the BOM app, so that blue sky felt like a personal win.
Balancing brand and performance
MW: Where is your marketing budget working hardest today?
TB: Every single dollar is running a marathon right now. The category is competitive, media channels are fragmenting, and production costs are going up. We try to approach every constraint as a creative opportunity. Every win our team pulls off helps raise the bar for the next one.
MW: What’s changed most in how you balance brand and performance?
TB: We are a title-led business, so our strategic bet is that if we curate the right variety of stories to showcase our service and ignite fans to drive a massive, outsized conversation around them, the broader business metrics will follow.
We complement this with brand campaigns such as our recent Next on Netflix campaign. This effort culminated in our first-ever local showcase, where we previewed Australian titles like the new adaptation of My Brilliant Career and the final, generation-defining season of Heartbreak High.
Finally, we support the above with a right-sized effort of always-on, consideration, and acquisition campaigns to demonstrate that Australia is watching and talking about a new Netflix release every week of the year.
MW: Which channel or platform currently over-delivers?
TB: Netflix itself. Most Australians open our app every single night, making it the most personalised, high-engagement billboard in the world. Because the product does such a heavy lift in content discovery, it frees up my team to focus on the big ideas: taking that living room conversation and amplifying it into a cultural moment in the real world.
The other is our amazing network of organic social channels. Every Aussie entertainment fan can follow Netflix ANZ on TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook to discover and talk about their next favourite title in a way that feels hyper-local and distinctly Australian.
The role of AI and agency partners
MW: What role does creativity play in your commercial strategy right now?
TB: It is the engine room for growth. Our culture memo uses the phrase “uncomfortably exciting,” and I encourage our team to live by that. I often say if an idea doesn’t keep you awake the night before because you worry it is too weird or too big, it is probably not a Netflix idea.
Whether it is tearing a portal to the Upside Down over Sydney Harbour or turning an Aussie pub into a Netflix Sports Club to get WWE, F1, and NFL fans hooked, we always try to take big swings. At the same time, everyone must use judgment, experience, and insight to inform their bet. We then need the candour to ruthlessly debate whether it worked afterwards.
MW: How are you using data, tech, or AI in a way that genuinely improves the work?
TB: Productivity is the biggest win. We never have enough time, so I use GenAI constantly to refine, simplify, and research. My team uses image tools to mock up ideas to inform and shape feedback for our partners. We are a creator-led company, so humans always drive the final output, but AI lets us iterate on and debate early ideas 10 times faster.
MW: What does a good agency partner look like for you in 2026?
TB: Selflessness and agility. We work with an incredible core group, including Amplify, Organic, Initiative, Two Palms, GoodStuph, and Bursty, and the common thread is a genuine, borderline-obsessive love for entertainment. They live the stories we tell, and they work together to do what’s best for Netflix.
Looking ahead to the next big bet
MW: What’s the toughest call you’ve had to make as a CMO?
TB: Anything involving people. Ending a long-term partnership with a valued agency or making structural changes to a team is never easy. You have to make the call that serves the future of the business, but we always try to balance that with kindness and gratitude. Everyone who touches our brand pours their heart into it.
MW: What’s one misconception about your brand or category that your team is actively trying to unpick through marketing?
TB: The idea that we’re just a tech company led purely by data. We are an entertainment company. While data informs us, it doesn’t lead us. If we only looked at historical data, we’d only ever make what already exists. To lead the trend line, you need human intuition, creative “gut,” and the courage to take a swing at something that hasn’t been done before.
MW: Looking ahead, where will your next big marketing bet come from?
TB: Some of our most exciting work now comes from the brands we partner with. Since launching Netflix Ads, we’ve opened up our ‘personalised billboard’ to other marketers, giving them engaged attention that’s hard to find elsewhere. It’s also allowed our team to partner with other cultural brands to create new moments of joy for fans, whether that’s Squid Game x Macca’s or our recent Bridgerton x Tinder partnership. I’m excited about what more brands in Australia can create together next.
Feature image- director of marketing, Netflix ANZ, Tony Broderick