What Is an Award Strategy and how Does It fit into Your PR Strategy?
Our client Evry Health just earned its sixth award in less than one year. And while both the Evry team and the Dala team were genuinely stoked to celebrate that sixth accolade, the excitement isn't really about the award. It’s about the broader strategy.
We built it as a deliberate layer of a larger PR strategy, engineered to keep executive visibility moving even when the traditional news cycle goes quiet. That distinction matters and it’s worth explaining.
The Problem with Waiting for News
For many of our clients, Dala is their media relations engine — pitching stories, building reporter relationships, and securing the earned placements that move the needle. A profile in a top business outlet, a feature in a trade publication, a broadcast segment — these are the placements that build real, lasting visibility.
But earned coverage requires a hook, a launch, a hire, a milestone, or a trend you're uniquely positioned to comment on. What happens in between?
For most executives, the answer is: nothing.
A strong PR strategy doesn't leave that gap empty. Within a full PESO framework — Paid, Earned, Social, and Owned media working together — award strategy sits inside the earned column as one of the most underutilized tools available. It's not a replacement for media relations, thought leadership content, social presence, or paid amplification. It's a complement to all of them. And in industries where organic news hooks are hard to manufacture on demand, it's often the engine that keeps the earned media wheel turning between the bigger moments.
That's exactly the challenge we faced with Evry Health — a Dallas-based, mobile-first health insurance company doing genuinely innovative work in one of the hardest industries to earn coverage in: insurance. Unless you're announcing a major funding round or a regulatory battle, insurance doesn't naturally generate headlines. So, alongside our broader PR strategy, we built a deliberate recognition program designed to carry visibility between the news cycles.
What an Award Strategy Actually Is
An award strategy is not submitting your client to every "Best of" list that lands in your inbox. A real award strategy is a structured, research-driven approach to identifying the right programs, sequencing them intentionally, and turning every recognition — win or finalist — into content or a media asset. The key here is repurposing!
At Dala, we build award strategies around four principles:
1. Selectivity over volume. Not every award is worth pursuing. We evaluate programs based on the credibility of the issuing organization and past award recipients, audience reach, editorial tie-in potential, and how well the recognition aligns with the client's strategic narrative. A prestigious regional award often outperforms a national award no one has heard of.
2. Sequencing with purpose. Local recognition builds regional credibility. Regional credibility supports national positioning. We sequence submissions to build on each other so that by the time a client is ready for a larger stage, they already have a track record that speaks for itself when pitching media.
3. Matching award type to goal. Project-based awards validate the work. Leadership awards elevate the executive. Business awards build the brand. A strong award strategy uses all three, deliberately, over time.
4. Turning recognition into content. Whether a client wins or is named a finalist, that recognition becomes a media pitch, a social asset, a sales tool, and proof of concept for the next submission. Inside a PESO strategy, a single award recognition can feed the earned, social, and owned channels simultaneously — extending its reach far beyond the moment of announcement. One award makes the next one easier to earn.
What Six Awards Built for One Executive and His Company
For Chris Gay, CEO and Co-Founder of Evry Health, we built a 360-degree recognition portfolio that positioned him — and his company — across multiple audiences, categories, and timeframes simultaneously.
The Dallas Business Journal C-Suite Leaders award placed him among North Texas's most respected senior executives, not just as a healthcare leader but as a peer to leaders across every major industry in the market. The D CEO Dallas 500 — a list you don't submit for, you earn through sustained visibility and credibility — recognized him twice, in 2023 and again in 2025. Two finalist placements in two separate D CEO Awards – D CEO Excellence in Healthcare Awards and D CEO Innovation Awards – demonstrated depth across two different verticals and categories, signaling Evry isn't a one-dimensional company. Recognition in the Dallas Innovates AI 75 placed Evry squarely in the region's forward-looking tech conversation — critical positioning for a company whose competitive advantage is its technology platform. And the Longhorn 100, which honors the 100 fastest-growing businesses led by UT Austin alumni, bridged Chris' personal story with his company's growth trajectory in a single, cohesive narrative.
Taken individually, each of these is meaningful. Taken together, they tell a story about a credible executive leading a company that the market's most respected institutions have independently recognized, repeatedly, across multiple dimensions.
Why This Works for Executive Positioning — and PR Strategy Overall
The shift in how people find information changes what credibility looks like. AI-generated search results, industry databases, and editorial aggregators all pull from the same signals: Who has been recognized? By whom? How recently? How consistently?
A strategic award portfolio answers all these questions and validates your thought leadership platform as part of a broader PESO strategy. As a result, this earned recognition positions a company as a thought leader and supports each media pitch. The earned media placement feeds the social strategy. Each channel makes the others stronger and fuels the PR strategy when done well.
For executives building visibility — whether they're leading a health tech startup, running a construction company, or establishing themselves as a credible voice in their industry — recognition from respected third-party organizations does something self-promotion can never do: it validates. It signals to the market, to potential partners, to future clients, and to the media that this is someone worth paying attention to. It lives on executive bios, LinkedIn profiles, pitch decks, and award organization websites indefinitely.
That's the award advantage — not as a standalone tactic, but as a strategic layer in a PR program built to last. If you want to explore a strategic award strategy for your company or executive team like our client Evry, or if you want to learn more about the PESO model, give us a call!