• by April 5, 2005

The only thing worse than returning from a week away, is coming back sick - and that is the Minute's minor misfortune this week.

Some wretched rhinovirus accompanied me to Paris, looming just beneath the surface like a harpy waiting to swoop in for the kill. It landed with me at JFK and has yet to be properly quarantined and retired. So amid the snuffling (yes, it's a word) and coughing, we recall an airy pastiche of café crème, pastry, Picasso paintings, children sweetly calling, "Maman," walks along the Seine, and spring blooming in earnest, far earlier than in old New York.

It's all just a mirage of the mind now, but so what - a girl can dream!

Face it: there is no easy segue to online advertising. In fact, we observed no online advertising. What we did notice, since so much time was spent outside, was outdoor advertising. The billboards of Avenir, the Havas-owned outdoor advertising powerhouse, are everywhere in Paris. Omnipresent were scrolling billboards of a type we don't see in North America. At major intersections and metro stops, Avenir displays feature scrolling ads from multiple companies. Some of the Avenir standalone billboards have interactive elements, though the scrolling displays don't and we wondered why.

In general, apart from the ad scrolls, the outdoor advertising we saw was nowhere near as interesting as what we see here in the United States. The Minute saw no wallscapes, few digital billboards and displays, no sampling, and little, if any guerrilla advertising. Of course it's possible we missed it, but we did hit the major shopping thoroughfares in Paris. In one very modern section of the city, we did come upon a huge electronic billboard featuring video images, narrative, and music. It was planted in a space-age outdoor pedestrian mall surrounded by Calder and Miró sculptures. The mall was surrounded by the headquarters of several French companies and global brands like McDonald's and Toys 'R Us.

Unlike the advertising in Times Square, the outdoor we saw didn't seem so cluttered and jumbled. Was it our imagination, or do the French really have a more refined aesthetic? Whatever the case, we look forward to the next trip abroad.