EP330: Bob Hope, Chairman & Co-Founder, Hope-Beckham-Espinosa

Great Minds

Robert E. (Bob) Hope is a veteran of the public relations and event marketing business. He is co-owner and president of Hope-Beckham, an independent agency based in Atlanta.

Hope and longtime friend Paul Beckham started Hope-Beckham 25 years ago.

Clients have included Chick-fil-A Foundation, Turner Broadcasting, Belk, The Coca-Cola Company, Southern Company, Home Depot, Comcast and a variety of sports teams and leagues as well as non-profit organizations.

He is author of two books – “We Could Have Finished Last Without You” about his early days with the Braves, and “Greater Late than Never” about people who achieved their life’s success after age 50.

Will Rogers once said there are two kinds of people on earth – those who march in the parade and those who sit on the curb and watch. If you march, you have only one view your entire life. However, if you sit on the right curb, you see marvelous things.

Bob Hope has spent his life on a marvelous curb observing remarkable people and events. He started working for the Atlanta Braves while in college and became the team’s director of public relations and promotions at age 24. He managed the Major League Baseball All-Star Game at age 25. And he was with Hank Aaron during the chase to break the all-time home run record of Babe Ruth.

When Ted Turner bought the team, he was promoted to vice president at age 29 and worked not only for the Braves but also the Turner-owned Atlanta Hawks and for Turner’s TV station, handling marketing for the Braves and the TV station.

He left Turner to work on sports, particularly the Olympics, for The Coca-Cola Company and then decided to go into the public relations agency business so he could work for both Coke and Turner, which led to a career in New York in a top job of the world’s largest public relations firm.

Along the way, he has been involved in many Olympics, including Atlanta. He helped several cities with their campaigns to land major league sports franchises – Charlotte in the NBA, Miami, Denver and Washington in Major League Baseball, Ottawa in hockey, and Atlanta in the WNBA.

He also attempted to open the doors to girls and women as baseball players, creating the Colorado Silver Bullets professional baseball team of elite women athletes, which traveled the world for four years playing against men’s amateur, college and minor league professional teams. The team was managed by former Braves star pitcher Phil Niekro. His involvement with the Silver Bullets led to a 14-year stint on the board of Billie Jean King’s Women’s Sports Foundation and six years as the only male on its executive committee. The WSF is the chief lobbying organization in favor of equal education opportunities, including sports, for women in colleges and universities.