You may find that reallocation can increase your PR benefits sharply without much increase in your PR costs.

Each major university may be a world leader in fighting a disease. A company that sponsors a university’s health research may deserve appreciation from our top political leaders and from hundreds of millions of us endangered by heart disease, cancer and other ailments.

Many universities fight a less-well-known “orphan disease” like MDS, a blood cancer that can grow into leukemia. Columbia University’s MDS Center is headed by Dr. Azra Raza, a world-class MDS fighter formerly with Chicago’s Rush University, then University of Massachussetts. Her articles have appeared in New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Blood, British Journal of Hematology and Leukemia Research.

If your company becomes a sponsor of anti-MDS research, and if your CEO and Dr. Raza jointly announce the kind of health advance that is frequently made in health research, you could actually see media coverage worldwide.

Notice that unlike sponsoring an athlete or an entertainment star as many companies do, there’s not much chance that medical objects of your affection will give you a red complexion with the errant behavior of athletes and entertainers who make news.

Looking at the year ahead many in PR think about “what should we SAY” to build protective goodwill our managements will love. A more productive question taught by PR Daily and other educators may be “what should we DO.” Reality is that those who protect the public often get public protection.

The public treasures those who protect our lives.