Like many service industries, public relations work is often hard to evaluate. Sometimes its value is evident (after a glowing Wall Street Journal article), sometimes it's hard to discern (while paying the monthly retainer fee, with no glowing articles).

Having developed and executed public relations strategies from both inside a public relations agency and on the client side, we understand effective communication practices and how to establish these practices within companies and agencies. PRQA works closely with companies to assess their communication needs and then assembles experienced teams that can deliver results. We help both parties define expectations, create consistent communication practices and establish performance benchmarks.

We've found that what counts is telling it like it is.

Although we have worked with clients over longer periods of time, our engagements are typically short. We ultimately believe that companies don't need us in the long run: When a client's PR systems are working well, we excuse ourselves and move to the next project.

For more details on how we work, see PRQA Clients

Background
Jennifer W. Michalski founded the company in April 1999. For the three years before founding PRQA, Jennifer was a partner and senior account executive at Antenna Group, a San-Francisco based public relations firm specializing in the high-technology sector. At Antenna, she led the launches of Ask Jeeves (Nasdaq: ASKJ), Alexa Internet (acquired by Amazon), Pacific Bell At Hand and WhoWhere? (acquired by Lycos). She also collaborated on messaging and positioning for a number of the firm's other Internet, e-commerce and business-to-business clients.

Across the industry, Jennifer saw an unusually high proportion of companies having rocky PR agency relationships, due often to misaligned expectations, poor communications or ineffective execution. She also saw that many executives understood the strategic role that PR could play in growing their companies, securing funding or building partnerships, but they were unaware of how to establish a PR campaign and which resources to employ, when.

December 2000
Q Tip
"... Her quality assurance may take the form of advising an agency to assign senior execs to an account; other times she gets the client to set more realistic goals...."

December 4, 2000
Digital Age Diplomacy
"PRQA serves as a liaison between clients and PR agencies to ensure both parties are on the same page, business-plan wise, and that they are communicating effectively. "A tech company might feel like they're not being represented well enough by their firm; a startup might not know where to begin with its PR agency," says Michalski."

December 28, 2000
Victors, Vanquished
in Year's Rough Waters
"Many dot-coms blew their budgets on publicity only to end up with memorable names but unprofitable businesses... Many dot-coms, consultants say, spent 30% or more of their budgets on marketing as they "tried to build up a brand and hoped they would be acquired," says Jennifer Michalski, president of PRQA, a public relations consulting firm."