Remembering
Jan. 17, 1956 –March 29, 2025
Fortune Magazine, 2011
Tom Bedecarré, a brilliant internationally renowned entrepreneur and advertising executive dubbed “Silicon Valley’s Favorite Adman” by Fortune magazine, died March 29 aged 69 in his Woodside home with family by his side after a tenacious four-year battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor.
A person with an enormous list of achievements, accolades and awards, moT (as he signed his early school papers) was funny, caring, loving, generous and devoted to his family and countless friends.
Bay Area Roots
A fourth generation Bay Area resident, Tom was the fourth of John and Catherine Reid Bedecarré’s six children. Born and raised in Concord, he attended Queen of All Saints School and Mt. Diablo High School.
He was a star 140-pound linebacker on the league champion Mt. Diablo Red Devils football team and a two-year student body president while maintaining a perfect 4.0 grade point average. He also served as President of the Concord Youth Council his senior year. He was offered a college football scholarship to Ivy League school Dartmouth.
Prophetically, his Mt. Diablo Class of 1974 classmates voted him "Most Likely to Succeed."
His parents met at Cal Berkeley, which was also the college of his paternal grandmother and his older brother Jay. Instead, he chose Stanford, beginning his lifelong love affair with the university. Tom encouraged his brother Bill to join him at Stanford two years later.
While on The Farm, Bedecarré spent one summer in Washington, D.C. as an intern for young Democratic California congressman Leon Panetta, who would later serve as secretary of defense, director of the CIA and White House chief of staff.
A Career and Love Story Begin on Madison Ave.
After graduating from Stanford in 1978 with a degree in political science, Bedecarré enrolled in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago to pursue an MBA in marketing and management policy.
Northwestern called and said they had a family which offers free housing to a grad student in turn for helping with chores at their home, especially taking care of the family dog. Tom welcomed the opportunity and spent his three years in Chicago living and growing close to the Lester Crown family, at the time one of America’s 10 wealthiest families.
With his 1981 MBA in hand, he sought a job on Madison Avenue in New York City, landing with Ogilvy & Mather, starting as an assistant account executive working on the General Food Maxwell House, Polaroid, AT&T and Hershey’s Chocolate accounts in the office headed by the legendary David Ogilvy.
During that time, he met his wife Margaret (Maggie) Geoghegan when a mutual friend asked Tom to help her job hunt to get into advertising in NYC. Tom and Maggie were married on June 23, 1984, in Georgetown, Connecticut. Their love affair and 40-year marriage were a true partnership with each spouse stepping up as a primary caregiver for the other under trying circumstances in the past decade.
Tom took a job with J. Walter Thompson in San Francisco in 1984. Upon arriving back in the Bay Area, he was informed a couple of days before starting that JWT had lost the client he was coming to work on. They found him a position in their new business department, which was not his goal.
He was soon hired by Hal Riney & Partners in the City and worked there under the leadership of the renowned Hal Riney on the Campbell’s Soup, MJB Coffee, Perrier and Calistoga mineral waters and G. Heileman Brewing Company accounts over the next six years as vice president, account supervisor.
Back in the Bay Area, Tom and Maggie had twin daughters Kathryn Anna and Madeline Reid in 1987 and son John Peter a year later. The family would enjoy years traveling together during school vacation breaks.
New Frontiers of Advertising
While at Riney, he became friends with three other young ad men. The quartet left the agency in 1990 and moved into a former Federal Express drop-off space directly across the street after forming Atlas Citron Haligman and Bedecarré. Atlas soon departed the agency and Bedecarré became chairman, a leadership position he would hold throughout the remainder of his illustrious career.
In a 1993 cover story about the agency in Communication Arts magazine, journalist Maxwell Arnold referred to the partners Citron, Haligman and Bedecarre as “puckish, lupine and brass tacks.” Tom was the brass tacks, the practical one who kept the agency under a firm hand.
As the world began to change with the rising popularity and power of the internet, Bedecarré and partners Matt Haligman and Kirk Citron made the visionary decision to position Citron Haligman Bedecarré as a digital agency, a term not widely in use at that time. CHB embraced technology and was an early adopter of dotcom trends for its growing roster of clients including PowerBar, Palm, The Gap and Sony. They helped launch startups like CNET and Evite.
Haligman and Citron said of their friend and colleague of 35+ years, “Traditionally, when creative people started ad agencies, it was with other creatives. Tom was the rare account guy who thought ‘out of the box.’ He was the perfect complement to Citron and Haligman. Tom helped us build a business from a creative boutique to one of the leading ad agencies in the world. We were so lucky to have him as a partner.”
CHB became the largest independent ad agency in San Francisco and grew to $100 million in annual billings. In 1995, CHB was named Western Agency of the Year by Adweek. Advertising Age magazine named them the fastest growing agency in the country for two years running. Other accolades followed, and the company eventually had 225 employees.
“Silicon Valley’s Favorite Ad Man”
In 2001, Citron Haligman Bedecarre took a $70 million investment from Accenture and Francisco Partners to build the digital agency of the future (long before the rest of the advertising business saw the digital wave coming). It was one of the largest investments ever made in the advertising business. They then merged with AKQA, a leading digital agency in London, keeping the company headquarters in San Francisco.
Two years later CHB merged with London-based AKQA with co-founders Ajaz Ahmed of AKQA serving as chairman in London and Bedecarré as CEO in San Francisco. The new AKQA agency began to expand throughout Europe and America and into Asia and South America. Among their long-time clients were Nike, Visa, Coca-Cola, Heineken, Microsoft and McDonald’s.
In a 2005 profile in the Wall Street Journal, Bedecarré said, “As more people adopt wireless and digital devices such as cell phones and Apple iPods, the web will replace television as the primary tool to connect marketers to their consumers, The internet is the hub of the equation…. the interactive agency is going to be the agency of the future.” In 2006, AKQA became the first agency to launch operations in China.
Bedecarré took immense pride in being a bridge between Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley, including introducing Facebook and Twitter executives to his clients to begin relationships that reshaped marketing. Bedecarré’s insights were shared with his 160,000 followers on Twitter and 83,000 on LinkedIn. He was among the first reaching 10,000 followers on LinkedIn.
Advertising veteran CEO Jack Rooney, who has known Tom for over 40 years, says, “Tom is one of a handful of pioneers who guided the advertising industry into the digital revolution. Tom was the principal leader of the industry in Silicon Valley.”
During his career Tom was proud not only of his agency’s creative work but of his work mentoring dozens if not hundreds of women and men under his charge.
In 2012 AKQA was purchased by WPP, the world’s largest advertising agency holding company, for $540 million. Bedecarré signed a long-term contract with WPP with a large investment in the company. Among his responsibilities as president of WPP Ventures Tom found business investment opportunities for the firm. He led WPP investments in Muzy and Refinery29.
A Guiding Legacy
During Tom’s time at AKQA, the company won more than 600 awards; AKQA was named Agency of the Year 33 times, most notably by OMMA five times and appeared on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list four times. AKQA was listed as a Leader in Forrester’s 37-criteria evaluation of US digital agencies in 2012.
His advertising career effectively ended three years later when Maggie suffered a serious injury during a horseback riding competition in Sonoma County. Tom spent all his time and energy nursing his wife back to health and eventually officially retired in April 2018.
His legacy at AKQA with his partner Ajaz is a firm now with over 6000 employees in over 50 countries.
Interactive Advertising Bureau President and CEO Randall Rothenberg says, “When the history of this period in marketing, advertising and media is written, Tom will be not just a chapter, but a recurring biographical theme throughout the work.”
Following his retirement, Bedecarré turned his talents to teaching as a Distinguished Careers Institute Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer in the Stanford School of Engineering and mentoring students in Stanford entrepreneurial programs (STVP, Lean LaunchPad and Hacking for Defense).
In 2018 he was presented with the Jon Blum Outstanding Alumni Mentor Award by Stanford Career Education. In 2023 he was honored for his work at Stanford with family, faculty, former students (who called him “inspiring” and “beloved”), Stanford classmates like Apple legend Guy Kawasaki, business partners and staff on hand at the Palo Alto campus.
A long-time entrant and judge of the Cannes Lions Awards, an international advertising competition, nearly 20 years ago Bedecarré was instrumental in establishing the Future Lions at Cannes Lions, now one of the most coveted honors for advertising students around the world.
Last year AKQA Future Lions launched the Tom Bedecarré School of the Year Award in honor of AKQA’s Chairman Emeritus. CEO Ahmed said, “Tom Bedecarré’s incredible career has been defined by his ability to nurture and develop the next generation of innovators. Through his relentless dedication to entrepreneurship and inclusivity Tom is a values-driven leader that has mentored creators to reach the highest summits of excellence.”
The Tom Bedecarré School of the Year Award recognises schools, academies and educational centres around the world that demonstrate a proven and pioneering approach, broadens access and leverages technology to amplify impact.
He was nominated for the AAF Advertising Hall of Fame in 2023. Among the numerous endorsement letters supporting the nomination by advertising luminaries, was this description, “As admen go, there are very few like this one. The nous, the charisma, the foresight, the courage, the humility, the innate confidence, the determination, the dual mindset, the intuition, the judgement, the good will and the kind nature—all these attributes combine to make up a man who made a special contribution and difference to the world, No adman has been more important in shaping the industry’s digital landscape and future than Tom Bedecarré, and his legacy will without doubt influence, inspire and impact creatives, entrepreneurs and business executives for years to come.”
AAF HALL OF FAME, 2023
He served on the board of directors of the Interactive Advertising Bureau Advertising Agency, Kate Farms and the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl.
History, Humor, and Hefty Harvests
Tom started growing enormous pumpkins in his Woodside yard to enter in the Half Moon Bay World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off. In fall 2022 he culminated his career with a sixth-place finish for his masterpiece 1251-pound pumpkin, ‘Lumpy Lou’.
His parents became hooked on genealogy after watching “Roots” and traveled the United States and Europe for decades accumulating information, photos and documents on their family history. They published a 765-page book in 2014 chronicling generations of all branches of their families.
Tom became interested in their effort and especially of World War II where his father served in the US Army and Maggie’s uncle Lt. John Chittick was killed in the Normandy Invasion campaign. He mined his father’s near photographic memory of those years to compile the written and visual history of John Bedecarré’s WWII career. The story is being published this year.
He was a sports fan of all Stanford teams (over 30-year season ticket holder) and Bay Area pros the 49ers, Giants and Warriors. As their children grew up in cities on both sides of the Bay, Maggie and Tom enjoyed attending their games and performances and supporting their educational endeavors and impressive academic achievements.
Tom’s wicked sense of humor never left him. His hilarious stories, observations and retorts were something family, friends and colleagues knew were always just a moment away. He never lost the capacity to make a joke or laugh at one.
Tom Bedecarré is survived by his wife of 40 years Maggie, daughters Madeline (Adrien Darchez) and Kate and son John, and Madeline and Adrien’s children, Myrtille and Valere. His two grandchildren were a special delight in recent years.
He has five siblings John Jay, Catherine Diane (Henry White), Corrinne Marie, William Clark (Nancy Garrett) and Albert Pierre (Claire Ernst). His 17 nieces and nephews benefited from Tom’s sage educational and career advice.
He was predeceased by his parents John and Cathy and sister-in-law Jill Bedecarré.
The family wants to thank the medical teams at Stanford Hospital, Pacific Neuroscience Institute and CeGaT in Germany where Tom traveled for treatment. His local caregivers Maria, Betina, Sonny, Jerome, Kesly and Jeylon were so helpful and caring to him and the family.