WESTERN UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH SCIENCES
MOMENTS THAT SHAPE US

WesternU has been around for over 45 years as one of the top graduate universities for health sciences in the country, and was recently recognized as a Tier-1 Medical school for Primary Care by US News. In short: they’ve been doing the work.

But despite the credentials, test scores and graduate placements - they weren’t being recognized for it.

Our job: develop and execute a campaign that showcases all 8 of their colleges across two states, underscores their commitment to underserved populations, research, and highlights their unique focus on humanistic care - all within an emotionally impactful 2:00 minute film.

Additionally, that film would also need to be distilled into a separate 0:30 second broadcast spot.

“From the first spark of an idea to the final cut, this video was built in partnership with the incredibly talented team at Journeymen Studios. Karl Stelter and his crew are true collaborators who brought both artistry and heart to the process.” - Shawna Federoff, VP Marketing at WesternU

To reach prospective students and donors, the spot needed to do more than give information - it needed to make them feel something. To resonate with their ‘why’, and to show (rather than tell) that WesternU was deeply aligned with their personal values.

So to stand out in a space saturated with statistics and scripted cliches, we chose to feature something unquestionably authentic: WesternU’s own students.

Fusing commercial visuals with documentary storytelling, we collaborated with internal teams to pre-interview over 25 students, identifying the most compelling story threads from first years to graduates. From here we wove them together into a pre-approved, visually connected story that would not just represent a single student, but embodied the full student experience across all 8 colleges and both campuses. 

This blending of styles resulted in an elevated opening that embodied the excitement and the weight of a graduate health sciences program, and set the stage for a montage-style approach where multiple student voices unified into one cohesive storytelling device.

This approach also gave us a core storytelling device: “Quiet Moments of Confidence.” These were powerful, intimate moments in a students journey where they were challenged in a significant way - only to realize under pressure that WesternU had prepared them for this moment. That they were doing this. And they could go out into the world with the confidence to live their dream.

KARL STELTER: Approaching emotional stories in a space known for ‘overreaching’ we knew we needed to stay grounded - and carving out a singular storyline from the student interviews was critical. This gave us a rock-solid foundation to not only capture moments that felt natural to students, but to choose the exact moments to elevate with story-board level precision.

In preparation we also worked hard to capture a diverse visual palette: from fire departments and hospitals, to classroom didactics and small moments of community - each location was a strategic move in service of the whole.

Additionally, we balanced different types of interactions within each space from first year of school to final semester. Defined as student-student, student-faculty, and student-patient, each flavor was critical in telling the full story, and putting the audience in their shoes from day one.

We also made one more big creative decision up front: we would not capture interviews on camera.

Instead, we put that time and money on-screen to tell the WesternU story visually - enabling us to transcend generic classroom shots and talking heads with rich visuals that would give audiences space to feel, rather than be told, what it means to go to WesternU.