Rolling up an Online Ad Agency Powerhouse: AKQA CEO Tom Bedecarre (Part 4)

AKQA is a company that was built largely during the Dotcom crash era.

SM: Of the firms you talked to, who ultimately made the investment? You were doing an ad agency roll-up, right? TB: Francisco Partners made an investment in our business which was a hybrid online / offline venture at that point. We acquired an agency in Washington DC, one in Singapore, and merged with AKQA out of London, and now we call the combined entity AKQA. But then 2001 came along and instead of growing we had to shrink quite a bit.

SM: This brings us to 2002 now? TB: Yes, and from 2002 to 2004 we steadily started building back our business, doing good work for clients such as Nike and Xbox. We were creating a name for ourselves as a strong independent interactive agency.

SM: This all happened under the AKQA Brand? TB: Yes, from 2001 on.

SM: Didn’t you switch investors last year? TB: This year, about two months ago.

SM: I was wondering what happened in the process, between 2004 and 2007 and what led up to the exit from your first set of private investors to a new one? TB: When we began to grow and make a name for ourselves, we opened an office in New York in 2005. We launched AKQA mobile a few months ago. Going back to 2001 when we put together this global network for clients, that was out differentiator. For Palm, we did all of their marketing throughout the world, and we started working for Xbox around the world, Nike in various projects, and the 2004 Olympics. At the time a lot of our competitors had closed down and closed off all of their branch offices outside of the US, but we were creating case studies of online campaigns and localizing them in 15 languages and 25 countries.

[to be continued]

[Part 3]
[Part 2]
[Part 1]

This segment is part 4 in the series : Rolling up an Online Ad Agency Powerhouse: AKQA CEO Tom Bedecarre
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