Lawrence World Class Karate (LWCK) is the only authentic Karate dojo in the greater Syracuse, NY area that teaches the traditional Japanese Shotokan and Okinawan Gōjū-ryū Karate systems.
Objective: LWCK wanted to profile Matt Killian, one of its students who is blind, epileptic and on the autism spectrum, because he had entered his first karate competition in Rochester, NY. The challenge was that this worthy news story was competing against local and regional New York news as well as major national news.
Strategy: The PR strategy implemented was to focus on the power of human resilience, not giving up despite insurmountable odds, and how karate has been used as a platform to build up a young man’s confidence, physical strength, and to help him achieve one of his most important goals.
Tactics: The unique angle was pitched to a select group of TV channels, newspapers, and podcasts. The media were invited for interviews and to view the young man training with his karate master in preparation for his karate competition. A press release was written that was distributed to the Syracuse, NY media as well as national media.
Results: The media outreach yielded fantastic results. Five interviews were obtained resulting in one front page article with photograph on The Eagle News and one TV interview with Spectrum 1 TV. We also obtained an online article with Syracuse’s largest newspaper, The Post Standard. The newspaper also sent a multimedia reporter to the competition in Rochester resulting in a five-minute video not only appearing on the publication’s website but was also posted on their YouTube channel. In addition, one podcast interview dealing with the challenge of ‘How to Instill Confidence and Success in Young Athletes,’ was achieved as well as an interview with ABILITY Magazine, a global publication which focuses on changing the public’s perception of what it means to have a disability.
Based on the media results obtained from the PR, the office of New York State Senator John Mannion picked up on the story. He awarded Matt with an official Senate Commendation for his two recent gold medals for Special Demonstration of kata and kumite at the 2023 Niagara Karate Championship.
Here are some great pieces of coverage we obtained: