By Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval with Delia Marshall

These days, getting people to notice you isn't easy. The Information Age has morphed into Information Overload. Messages are everywhere: At the bottom of golf cups on the putting green, flashing on ATM screens, even posted over urinals (an excellent product placement for Budweiser).

So how do you get heard? How does your company connect with the consumer?

You need a Big Bang.

A Big Bang is designed to help make a brand explode onto the marketplace virtually overnight. In this world of shrinking timeframes and global competition, no one has the luxury of time to get the point across. Many clients are public companies, which means they live in a ninety-day world, under tremendous pressure to produce results before the next quarterly earnings statement. A Big Bang creates an ever-expanding universe for a product, and turns occasional users into fierce loyalists. A Big Bang cuts through the clutter and gets people to sit up and take notice. A Big Bang helps you to make the sale, close the deal, get the gig now. Here's why:

A BIG BANG DISRUPTS. At its core, a Big Bang idea is about taking the spotlight. It is about ideas that are simply too outrageous, too different, too polarizing to go unnoticed. There is a sea of sameness out there. We're glutted with products and services. You can't go anywhere without seeing the same mind-numbing brands over and over again. Drive down the highway in California and you'll pass by a strip mall with Gap, Barnes & Noble, Old Navy, The Home Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond, and a gas station. Go through a couple of stoplights, and the whole thing starts all over again. Was that last fast-food joint a McDonald's or a Burger King? Who can tell the difference anymore?

A BIG BANG IS ILLOGICAL. Twenty-seven years ago, if you wrote a business plan on how to make money by selling water, you'd die of thirst waiting for the loan approval. For years and years people just turned on the tap and had a drink. For free. Then came Perrier. Some French genius thought, Hey, I'm going to fill a bottle with water and charge those Americans for it. And suddenly we were all convinced that expensive water made us better, healthier, smarter, more sophisticated.

A BIG BANG HAS A DRAMATIC, IMMEDIATE AND IRREVERSIBLE IMPACT. Big Bang marketing ideas disrupt because they are "discontinuously innovative." They reject the notion of incremental or evolutionary thinking and instead look for step-change solutions. They alter the landscape forever by introducing a new way of thinking about a product or service. FedEx is a great example. Before FedEx, you waited - and waited - for the mail to arrive. If it took five days for an important business document to arrive what could you do? It was simply "in the mail." FedEx completely changed this behavior. Magically (to the dismay of those of us who called in sick to catch up on much neglected closet organization), the report prepared in Houston on Tuesday night now arrives in Cincinnati on Wednesday morning. (The Internet, of course, has raised the ante yet another level.)

A BIG BANG CAN'T BE IGNORED. Big Bang ideas are intense ideas. They are intentionally polarizing. You must have a point of view about them. They are the six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. They must be dealt with. They force opinions. Yes, some folks think the AFLAC duck and his incessant quack is annoying. We are incredibly pleased about that. Yes, a few conservative organizations have criticized the sensual content of the Herbal Essences commercials. Our response? Bring it on.

The first requirement of a Big Bang is to forget every rule you've ever learned. In order to disrupt the established paradigm and get the consumer's attention, you need to consider everything except the traditional approach. You need to take foolish risks and consider options that no one else has considered.

The Big Bang approach to marketing is tailor-made for today's world. Consumers are so inundated with advertising and products that only a disruptive idea will penetrate their consciousness. You must ignore industry standards and turn the following pieces of unconventional wisdom into a way of life:

FORGET ABOUT THE VISION THING. Too many companies have their five-year plan, their one-year plan, their six-month plan. That stuff rarely works. What's the point of having a vision for what you want to attain in five years, if you can't pay your rent now? Whenever you feel tempted to escape into the clear problem-free future, jolt your brain back to the present by setting one-hour goals for your team.

SHRINK TO SUCCESS. Big Bang ideas come from small spaces. It is only through shrinking your organization that you can create an atmosphere where great ideas continually bubble up to the surface. Compressing your staff, time, and space establishes the perfect staging ground for Big Bangs.

ASSUME THE WORST. Fear is a good thing. Fear, in fact, may well be the most powerful force in business. Fear spurs creativity. Ironically, it is the only force strong enough to encourage people to take risks. Assuming the worst generates enough anxiety to motivate the troops to gamble on a controversial "out there" idea.

STOP THINKING. Why do so many marketers and advertising teams have trouble coming up with an idea that touches a consumer's heart? They think too much. But emotion sells. An emotional pitch simplifies a message, allowing it to cut across economic, gender, or cultural lines.

CREATE CHAOS. Why? Because creativity isn't logical. In order to unlock the creative potential of everyone in your company, you need to allow a certain amount of disorganization. If you want your staff to be courageous enough to come up with a disruptive Big Bang, you need to create an environment where risk-taking is safe - even encouraged.

In Bang! Getting Your Message Heard in a Noisy World, you'll learn that Big Bangs are anything but business as usual. You'll learn that, Einstein notwithstanding, energy equals a lean, flat management structure multiplied by emotion, squared. You'll learn that you need to go for the gut, spinning emotional impulse into gold. You'll learn that chaos is the flip side of creativity. You'll learn how to create a condensed environment that moves at warp speed. You'll become expert in recognizing which ideas will work, and which will fizzle. How to execute and sell your Big Bang. How to bust out of black holes, and keep Big Bangs perpetually expanding. In the end, you'll develop the tools to create an immediate and dramatic impact on your company's bottom line.