Make the announcement louder. Make the logo bigger. Yell. Call more people on the phone to sell them an extended warranty. Send more emails. Hustle harder.

None of it works.

The problem with the fountain isn’t that they didn’t make a big enough sign. The problem is that the fountain itself is poorly designed. It’s an attractive nuisance, a dangerous thing to put in the middle of a boring courtyard. The sides invite sitting and standing, and the height beckons people to walk in and around it. And the consistent cues of its design aren’t going to be undone by an ugly, intrusive sign, even one in red with ALL CAPS.

And louder and more persistent PA announcements aren’t going to help if the situation people are in has lulled them into not listening.

And a bigger logo isn’t going to get someone to care about your company if the product and your story don’t resonate with them.

Insisting on a bigger interruption is lazy. It’s lazy because if you really cared about solving the problem, you’d change the situation, not yell about it.

If you get the design right, you can whisper instead.