Everything in today's world is going faster and faster, and television commercials are no exception. At the start of the television age the standard commercial lasted 60 seconds, but most of today's commercials are only half that length and many are even shorter. The 15-second commercial, introduced a few years ago as a way to cut skyrocketing advertising costs, may soon be the most common in the United States. (Our television-watching counterparts in Japan and Europe are already being treated to 7-second mini-commercials ! ) What stands behind the message that blips onto and off our television screens before we have time to get to the kitchen and hack? Months of planning hundreds of interviews with potential users of the product hours of writing dozens of actors, directors, and technicians days of filming and hundreds of thousands of dollm's in payments to the television networks that will run the ad. Take for example a recent commercial for a certain brand of cough drops. The manufacturer of the cough drops spent four months trying to think of a way to boost sales. After several surveys of cough drop users, the company decided to market a strawberry-flavored lozenge. Further surveys identified tile typical users of the strawberry-flavored cough drop as persons between the ages of 15 and 30. This infforination was important in planning the content and style. of the commercial (fast-paced and upbeat, with colorful graphics and lively music) and in determining when to air it (during situation comedies, prime-time dramas, and music specials). The creative team at the advertising agency that handled the cough drop company's account then took over. After hours of discussion and writing, they came up with six scripts, from which the client chose two. One involved a young woman pulling a strawberry out of a box of cough drops. The outline, or storyboard, for the commercial looked deceptively simple: four sketches and a few lines of 'voice-over.' Yet these few words and images (just enough to fill 15 seconds) had been carefully selected to convey crucial information about the product: its effectiveness in suppressing coughs and soothing sore throats, the absence of sugar, and its strawberry flavor. Turning this carefully calculated script. into an effective commercial involved finding just the right actor: a young woman who would be attractive to the target audience and who could make her positive response to the cough drops look convincing. Forty-two actors were. auditioned one was chosen. The actor wasn't the only element of the commercial that had to go through an audition. More than a hundred outfits were inspected before one was chosen for her to wear, and hundreds of strawberries had to be sorted through. The filming began at 9:30 one morning. 'All' the actor had to do was to open a box of cough drops, pull out a strawberry and munch on it. Yet her movements and facial expressions had to be just right, and achieving that perfection took three hours and 72 shootings, or 'takes.' Even then—shooting completed—the job was far from done. Thousands of feet of film had to be reduced to a compact 45 feet of finished commercial. Using million-dollar, computerized equipment, the producer, writer, and art director selected the best two takes and mixed images and sound to produce a polished final product. The result? A simple, effortless-looking lisle film that shows none of the tremendous effort that went into producing it, but which should justify all of that time, creativity, and expense by boosting cough drop sales. Which of the following best expresses the main idea of the selection?