In creating WebMD’s first commercial branding effort, New York-based agency Gotham wanted to emphasize that this was the only Internet healthcare Web site geared to both doctors and patients. The client also wanted to make "a big splash," according to Gotham creative director Dan Sheehan, who also served as the campaign’s copywriter.
"Even though they were still working on the site," said Sheehan, "they wanted to get the word out that they were a force to be reckoned with. They wanted to make almost a mini Super Bowl spot—a big, big spot."
The result was the :30 "Info Highway," directed by Danny Ducovny of Venice, Calif.-based Cucoloris Films, which makes the information superhighway analogy literal. The spot opens with a wide aerial shot of an expansive desert canyon with a swath of road cutting through it. We see a close shot of a white convertible filled with doctors driving in one direction; another red convertible, filled with patients, approaches from the opposite direction.
Leonard Nimoy ("a voice of authority," according to Sheehan) provides the voiceover: "Now, people cruising the Internet looking for health information and support can go to the same place doctors go—WebMD." The two speeding cars are headed on a collision course with each other. At the last second, what had appeared to be a game of chicken ends when both cars suddenly swerve so that they ride parallel to each other.
The cars approach a cliff as Nimoy’s VO relates that WebMD (www.webmd.com) offers access to trusted health information to everyone. In slow-motion, the cars majestically launch into the air and appear almost suspended over a gorge, high above a river below. "It uses the power of the Internet to bring people and doctors closer together," the VO continues. One of the doctors beckons to the passenger car, which sets off a round of passenger-swapping. Each car ends up with a doctor and patient paired in the front and back seats.
Both cars continue their journey and land on the other side of the canyon, still travelling in tandem. At this point the music, by Chris Bell of Chris Bell Music & Sound Design, West Los Angeles, kicks into overdrive—what had been a spare underscore highlighted by the sound mimicking a heartbeat on EKG monitor builds into a driving percussive piece.
The analogy is realized as the VO says that WebMD "will help us all make the leap into the future." It ends with an aerial shot of the desert canyon revealing that "WebMD" is spelled out by the river. "Health finally has a home page: WebMD," the VO concludes.
Sheehan related that he’d originally wanted to shoot the spot at the Grand Canyon in May, but wasn’t allowed to since that month was the height of tourist season. Instead, Ducovny (tapped for his expertise in cars, effects and people, said Sheehan) and DP Eagle Eagelson shot the live-action in the Moab desert (the same place where scenes from Thelma & Louise were filmed), and shot the stunt jumps at an airstrip in the Mohave desert. "We needed the car to ramp up to fifty miles per hour to make the jump," said Sheehan, "so [Dirtworks, San Diego] built a gigantic dirt ramp."
From a helicopter, aerial cameraman Hans Bjerno shot plates that simulated the movement of going over the canyon. The cars were filmed against a green screen, as the actors stepped from one car into another. Although the cars had to be convertibles to permit the actors’ movement, the agency purposely chose classic "muscle cars" so as take some of the high-tech spin off the spot and to make the Internet seem "more friendly," according to Sheehan.
San Francisco-based Radium provided the visual effects, including the extensive compositing done by lead Inferno artist/online editor Simon Mowbray, and Inferno artists Jonathan Keeton and Davi Stein. For this project, Radium set up an L.A.-based office out of which to work, said Sheehan.
Additional agency credits go to Gotham chief creative officer Lynn Giordano; art director Sean Dougherty and producer Wendy Brovetto. (The WebMD account recently shifted to Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, New York, in the wake of WebMD’s merger with Healtheon, formerly an Internet-based network for physicians.)
Production credits go to Cu-
