Distinctive pink signage with multilingual directions now guides visitors to Olympic venues, amidst a backdrop of increased advertising and public resistance to it
Paris is gearing up for the 2024 Olympics, but many are unhappy about the excessive advertising billboards around the cityKeitma / Shutterstock
Metro lines that will serve Olympic and Paralympic venues have started erecting distinctive pink signage to help visitors find their destination.
Contrasting with RATP’s usual green, the signs include pictograms representing the site hosting the event and its name.
The signs will line the route from the platforms to the station exits and have been translated into English and Spanish.
By July, all the Olympic stations in the Paris region will be equipped with some 3,500 signs. Installation will cost €10 million, two-thirds of which will be financed by Ile-de-France Mobilités (IDFM).
The metro signs are not the only glaring reminder of the approaching Olympic Games in the city.
Advertising overload
In the run-up to the sporting extravaganza, facades around venues will be covered with commercial advertising.
Official partners will be able to advertise within a 500m radius of the Stade de France, the Place de la Concorde and the Château de Versailles.
Le Parisien warned: “Logos glorifying soda, insurance companies or watches could even flourish on listed buildings or those registered as historic monuments if they host competitions, all thanks to [legal] exemptions.”
Résistance à l'agression publicitaire, an organisation well known for its “anti-pub” sticker campaign against junk mail in letter boxes, has started to cover hoardings used to advertise Olympic partners with brown paper.
Ad
So far adverts for Coca-Cola, Toyota, Carrefour, Air France and Danone have been targeted, with slogans scrawled on top denouncing the Games as “JOP (Jeux Olympiques de Paris) de la Pub.”
In a press release, the group said that people in Paris receive between 1,200 and 2,200 separate advertisements a day.
“Advertising is everywhere and imposed on us,” it said.
“Using the Olympic Games to promote sponsors whose activities cause environmental, social and health damage has to stop.”
Big switch-off
Some 120 digital advertising screens on Lyon’s metro system were turned off in April in a bid to reduce advertising in public spaces and save energy.
The screens will be gradually dismantled after the city’s ecologist municipal authority refused to extend the operating contract.
It follows a nationwide effort to curb pollution from digital advertising screens. Last year a new law banned them from being on between 01:00 and 06:00, along with lights in shop windows.
Mayors can enforce the law by sending warning letters to offenders and, if nothing is done, issuing fines of €200 a day for each screen or window.
However, campaigners argue that while the state has imposed the law, it has also allowed advertising screens into waiting rooms in job centres, post offices and even hospitals.
