PARIS – For a second year, the international tennis advertising business seems unimpressed with the French Open — at least outside the grounds of Roland Garros.
The gigantic images of players and their shirts, shorts, rackets and headbands, ubiquitous from 2003 to 2008, are nowhere to be seen on city streets.
At the Porte d’Auteuil subway station, gateway to Roland Garros, the walls are bereft of tennis ads. Instead, ad agencies have placed large, lighted billboards for the iPad’s arrival in France on Friday and the Disney movie, “The Prince of Persia.”
In the mid-2000s, the tennis sportswear and equipment giant adidas spread and brushed nearly a ton of crushed red clay along a corridor leading to the street. It created the feeling of a tennis court and the idea was to draw attention to Justine Henin’s posters, from which she uttered the emphatic motto: “Impossible Is Nothing!”
In those same years, images of nearly a dozen players promoting rackets, bags, shirts and extreme energy appeared larger than life along the sides of the Metro tracks. Arriving tennis fans could not escape a barrage of buying suggestions.
This year, they see real estate agency logos and household products. Upstairs, they are confronted with multiple images of a male figure from an El Greco painting, part of an invitation to an exhibition promising they will learn of Spain’s greatest artists, “Greco to Dali.”
That’s outside the citadel of French tennis.
Inside the grounds of Roland Garros, the assault on spectator eyes continues. Logos and commercial acronyms of perhaps a dozen international companies are emblazoned on the sideboards and backdrops of the major stadium courts.
On opening day, inside Court One, often labeled the Bullring for its oval shape, a reporter counted no fewer than 54 names, several repeated as many as six or seven times. Each word was designed to stand out, capturing the lens of any camera pointed in its direction.
Like their counterparts in Melbourne and Flushing Meadows, French Open fans can barely imagine what a professional tennis court might look like without advertising. Most cite Wimbledon as the lone exception, the least commercial of the four major international championships.
Even there, mild concessions are tolerated for a few select vendors. One is Slazenger, the maker of the tennis balls used in The Championships. The company’s name appears but the colors of the lettering are muted, sometimes visible only to the subconscious. That’s because the logos often arrive in dark green letters on light green backgrounds — in a sea of grass.
The gigantic images of players and their shirts, shorts, rackets and headbands, ubiquitous from 2003 to 2008, are nowhere to be seen on city streets.
At the Porte d’Auteuil subway station, gateway to Roland Garros, the walls are bereft of tennis ads. Instead, ad agencies have placed large, lighted billboards for the iPad’s arrival in France on Friday and the Disney movie, “The Prince of Persia.”
In the mid-2000s, the tennis sportswear and equipment giant adidas spread and brushed nearly a ton of crushed red clay along a corridor leading to the street. It created the feeling of a tennis court and the idea was to draw attention to Justine Henin’s posters, from which she uttered the emphatic motto: “Impossible Is Nothing!”
In those same years, images of nearly a dozen players promoting rackets, bags, shirts and extreme energy appeared larger than life along the sides of the Metro tracks. Arriving tennis fans could not escape a barrage of buying suggestions.
This year, they see real estate agency logos and household products. Upstairs, they are confronted with multiple images of a male figure from an El Greco painting, part of an invitation to an exhibition promising they will learn of Spain’s greatest artists, “Greco to Dali.”
That’s outside the citadel of French tennis.
Inside the grounds of Roland Garros, the assault on spectator eyes continues. Logos and commercial acronyms of perhaps a dozen international companies are emblazoned on the sideboards and backdrops of the major stadium courts.
On opening day, inside Court One, often labeled the Bullring for its oval shape, a reporter counted no fewer than 54 names, several repeated as many as six or seven times. Each word was designed to stand out, capturing the lens of any camera pointed in its direction.
Like their counterparts in Melbourne and Flushing Meadows, French Open fans can barely imagine what a professional tennis court might look like without advertising. Most cite Wimbledon as the lone exception, the least commercial of the four major international championships.
Even there, mild concessions are tolerated for a few select vendors. One is Slazenger, the maker of the tennis balls used in The Championships. The company’s name appears but the colors of the lettering are muted, sometimes visible only to the subconscious. That’s because the logos often arrive in dark green letters on light green backgrounds — in a sea of grass.