Leigh Anne Brodsky, the licensing and marketing executive who helped steer the development and growth of such iconic characters as the Peanuts gang, SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer, has died. She was 67.
Brodsky died Friday in New York of complications from dementia, her husband, former record label and Warner Bros. marketing exec Greg Brodsky, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Brodsky spent about a dozen years at Viacom, most notably as president of consumer products at Nickelodeon, before joining Discovery Communications in May 2016. A few months later, she spoke with THR’s Georg Szalai about connecting with millennials “who want something that’s authentic.”
In 2011, she became the 36th inductee into the Licensing Industry Hall of Fame.
The oldest of six kids, Leigh Anne Conyngham was born in Cleveland on Feb. 26, 1958. Her father, Richard, was a marketing consultant in the textile industry and a professor of business at St. Peter’s College in New Jersey, and her mother, Joanne, was a piano and voice instructor.
Raised in Glen View, Illinois, and Wyckoff, New Jersey, Brodsky often was cast as the lead in high school and college musicals before she graduated from Holy Cross in 1978 with job offers from The Wall Street Journal and United Media Enterprises.
She joined the latter at an annual salary of $13,000 and as vp licensing and merchandising helped bolster the business surrounding Charles Schulz’s Peanuts and Jim Davis’ Garfield franchises.
Brodsky began a four-year stint at Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video in 1992 and directed worldwide marketing and merchandising for properties including Saturday Night Live, The Coneheads, Wayne’s World and Lassie.
After a couple years as a senior vp at Little Golden Books (The Lone Ranger, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer), Brodsky moved to Viacom in 1999. Through 2011, she managed a 150-person team and Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central brands including SpongeBob, Dora, Blue’s Clues, South Park, Beavis and Butt-Head and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that churned out billions of dollars in retail revenue every year.
In 2003, she was named Entertainment Marketer of the Year by Ad Age.
Brodsky worked at Peanuts Worldwide and Iconix Entertainment from 2013-16 before landing at Discovery, where she led several $100 million businesses. She started her own company, LAB Licensing and Branding, in 2019.
In addition to her husband — they first met in 1984 and named their future children on their third date, then married in 1986 — survivors include their kids, Allie and Daniel, and her siblings, Peggy, Nick, Kevin and Brian. (Greg Brodsky also launched the classic rock website BestClassicBands.com in 2015.)