Now hear this

ALL ENTREPRENEURS FACE THE CHALLENGE OF GETTING noticed in a crowed marketplace. Marketers Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval share their solution in Bang! Getting Your Message Heard in a Noisy World (Doubleday, $24.95). What it takes, according to the co-founders of the advertising agency The Kaplan Thaler Group Ltd., is a "Big Bang"--something "that bucks conventional wisdom and stops people in their tracks."

They offer their own idea of using a quacking duck in ads for AFLAC, a supplemental insurance provider that suffered from poor name-recognition. They explain how they came up with this and similar Big Bangs. One recurring strategy is compression: Pack staff, time and space tightly, they advise, because crowding stirs up ideas. And encourage employees to bring emotional baggage to work; otherwise, they won't be emotionally engaged in their jobs.

DON NICHOLS is a freelance editor and writer in Dallas.

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