LAST WORD

Andy Beaupre of Beaupre and Company in his Portsmouth office. Photo:  Jamie Cohen

"People think you (public relations professionals) can turn a frog into a prince. You can't." Andy Beaupre, Beaupre and Company

If he hasn’t personally seen it all, then Andy Beaupre, has certainly heard it all when it comes to the truly obtuse field of public relations. After all, he’s been around in the industry long enough to have met Edward L. Bernays, the early 20th Century inventor (if such a distinction can be made) of public relations. Along with his wife, Karen, Beaupre started the high-tech firm Beaupre & Company way back in the late 20th Century — 1983 to be precise — when Portsmouth was considered a PR backwater, mostly serving the local business community.

Although many in the area haven’t heard of the company because of its high tech, business-to-business focus, Beaupre & Company developed a remarkable stable of successful companies you likely haven’t heard of — he estimates that 30 of the companies they have represented were eventually merged or acquired to the tune of $12 billion. (Not surprisingly, his own company was successful enough to be acquired by the top-shelf international firm Omnicom Group in 1999.) “We’re not investment bankers but we are instrumental in creating brand identity,” Beaupre told me recently at his Harbour Place office overlooking the Piscataqua River, easily one of the admirable office views around.

I visited Beaupre because he is one of the founding fathers, so to speak, of the modern PR renaissance in Portsmouth. It’s purely secondary that’s he’s also one of the most quotable and knowledgeable characters around who happens to make my job easier. “People think you can turn a frog into a prince,” Beaupre mused recently about the public relations industry. “You can’t.”

Beaupre, a graduate of Somersworth High School and the University of New Hampshire, is the local institutional memory for the how the industry has changed and been shaken up many times since he started in 1976. He remembers when fax machines were exotic and overnight delivery by Federal Express was considered information age revolutionary. “That was real time,” he said. Today his agency of 25 employees, which has been given considerable autonomy by its conglomerate owner, now offers podcasts for clients.

“Clients come and go,” he told me, but what’s he most proud of, well, suffice to say, he’s proud of a lot. He’s proud of staff tenure that averages nine years, a virtually unheard of figure in the industry. He attributes this stability to a healthy work culture kept stable by the rare fact that the principal founders are still around. He’s proud of the company’s “loyalty to good writing.” He’s proud of his growing photography avocation. And he’s really proud of the “thought leadership” his firm provides to clients and just about anyone interested in smart PR. “We like to practice what we preach,” he said. For example, for a smart laugh or two that will get you thinking, check out the Viewpoints page of the company Web site (www.beaupre.com). Beaupre and his staff write about “Nightmare CEOs who contaminate PR programs,” “CEOs who make programs great,” and “Self-inflicted wounds,” about how the PR industry is usually its own worst enemy.

Beaupre gets feedback from fellow PR professionals about saying bad things, even in the abstract, about client stereotypes and giving away free information such as how to deliver effective speeches — advice we all wish more corporate executives would take — as though they were PR state secrets. He’s also amused about agencies that fear sharing client identities. “If you’re scared of having a client stolen, then you must not be confident about the work you’re doing for them,” said Beaupre, who also has turned heads in the industry by rejecting prospective clients because they weren’t a good fit.

Beaupre’s first client was a company that made dot matrix printers, products seemingly from another technology universe. Beaupre recently signed on with an exotic Internet measuring company called Gomez. He stays away from most of the day-to-day tactical stuff, mostly focusing on client recruitment. Retirement appears to be an alien notion. “I’ve got to stay really busy,” said Beaupre, who has established the Beaupre Entrepreneurial Scholarship at UNH for aspiring busybodies from Somersworth High School. “To sit around is not a good use of my time.”