Anna Garwolińska, one of the pioneers of the Polish PR industry and president of Glaubicz Garwolińska Consultants, recalls that public relations in Poland was born out of the chaos of the political and economic transition, without clearly defined rules and while replacing propaganda with a new language of communication. It is precisely in the 1990s that she set the plot of her book A Scorpion Bit Me and Dropped Dead. As she emphasizes, thanks to the strong commitment of the professional community, the industry has developed significantly since the 1990s, although it still struggles with problems rooted in its earliest beginnings.
“PR appeared as something almost magical, because before that there had only been propaganda. Everyone knew how to write slogans, but we had to find a different language, a different way of reaching people who would actually believe us, and we did not know the rules of the game. The first PR agency, contrary to many claims, was MP Agency, which entered the Polish market together with Philip Morris, and only later did we begin to learn the profession. I was one of the first five people who started public relations in Poland. At that time, we did not even know exactly what it was,” Anna Garwolińska, president of Glaubicz Garwolińska Consultants, a specialist in strategic advisory, corporate and crisis communication, and author of A Scorpion Bit Me and Dropped Dead, told Newseria.
The beginnings of the PR industry in Poland were directly linked to the systemic transformation and the creation of new rules for social communication. In the reality of an emerging market, there was a shortage not only of tools, but also of experience and standards, which were only beginning to take shape.
“It was a departure from propaganda, from those dark times when the Party was always right. At the same time, we had to persuade society to come together and believe that by voting for freedom on June 4, they had made the right choice in choosing capitalism,” Anna Garwolińska recalls.
As she explains, PR activities at that time were pioneering in nature and focused mainly on media relations and communicating economic changes, including privatization. The lack of tools and standards meant that the work relied heavily on improvisation and direct contacts.
“I remember a moment when I was an adviser to the minister for ownership transformation and I came to him with the idea that we should make episodes about privatization in Czterdziestolatek. Twenty Years Later. The first reaction was: ‘Oh God, they will kill us.’ Then it turned out it could be done, and that making fun of privatization would actually reduce fear. Those episodes of Czterdziestolatek. Twenty Years Later were produced by Kajtek Kowalski. I also write about this in my book,” the author says.
As she stresses, there was no such thing as lobbying in the formal sense back then, but tasks belonging to that area still had to be carried out.
“Please remember that we had a huge number of failed enterprises that were worth very little, and at the same time we had to sell them. Meanwhile, just across the border in Germany, anyone willing to take responsibility for a German enterprise was given additional money by the government, while in our case it was exactly the opposite. We had to sell them in order to bring money into the state budget,” Anna Garwolińska recalls.
Building contact databases, monitoring publications, or preparing materials was all done manually, which required much more time and effort than it does today. This translated into a specific work culture in the industry, where availability, speed, and readiness to work outside standard hours were crucial. In practice, this meant a very intense working mode for teams.
“When we received briefs on Friday at 5:00 p.m. and the pitch was on Monday at 9:00 a.m., then at 9:00 a.m. on Monday we were ready. Each of us had this conviction that it was worth it and that it had to be done. We were turned a bit into Stakhanovites, but we wanted it ourselves. We were proud of the fact that we worked 18 or 19 hours a day, slept at work, lived our work,” says the president of Glaubicz Garwolińska Consultants. “In the early 1990s, entering the Sejm was like entering any other place. There were no passes, no security, every MP was accessible. MPs sat there until late at night and genuinely talked about what could and should be done. People like Mazowiecki or Kuroń genuinely cared.”
According to research by Exacto, the public relations agency market in Poland currently consists of around 1,100 entities, and its structure is highly dynamic. Some 43% of companies have been operating in the industry for less than five years, while in 2020 that share was almost half as high. The PR industry condition index in 2025 stood at 53%, one of the lowest results in the history of the survey. The market still struggles with the problem of professionalization and the preparation of staff for work in a demanding communication environment.
Since 2017, PR professionals have consistently assessed their industry as growing, but insufficiently supported by the education system. They have been critical of how new staff are prepared, with education usually receiving scores in the lower part of the scale. The research shows that education has for years been one of the main factors limiting the stronger development of the sector.
Today, public relations covers a much broader scope of activities than it did in the 1990s and increasingly goes beyond traditional media relations. The industry is developing toward strategic advisory, reputation management, and communication in regulatory and ESG-related areas, while PR activities are increasingly based on data analysis and performance measurement.
“If the internet disappeared right now, most PR agencies would collapse. Back then, we simply went to Empik and checked who worked in which editorial office. We took newspapers off the shelves and read them ourselves. There was no such thing as media monitoring, so we had to do it on our own. Those really were pioneering times. What is important is that we did not realize how far society could be seduced; we were more genuine than people are today,” Anna Garwolińska says.
Over the last three decades, relations between business, the media, and politics have become subject to formal regulations that have helped organize the rules of the market. In Poland, one of the key milestones was the introduction of the 2005 Act on lobbying activity in the law-making process, as well as the gradual adaptation of the market to EU standards regarding transparency and stakeholder relations.
“We were praetorians, we truly believed in it. We were not as cynical as politicians and journalists are today. It was a somewhat different world. Do I remember it with sentiment? Certainly. Were we naive? Absolutely. Did we believe that what had come to us would be better and more exciting because we still remembered the 1980s and martial law? Absolutely. Did we succeed? We did everything we could at that time,” says the strategic advisory, corporate, and crisis communication specialist.
Anna Garwolińska describes her experiences from the period of transformation and the beginnings of the public relations market in Poland in her book A Scorpion Bit Me and Dropped Dead. It consists of two novellas devoted to the realities of the 1990s and the turn of the century, as well as to the social and professional relationships that were changing during that time.
