If you're going to change someone's race on your corporate website (which you shouldn't!), you might want to do a better job with the Photoshop. Microsoft got itself in a bit of trouble when its Polish-based unit altered a photo on its website by replacing a black man's face with that of a white man's but forgetting to change the color of the man's hand.
Microsoft's US web site had the original photo of two men: one black, one Asian. But apparently Poland isn't ready for that. Some point to Poland's ethnic homogeneity as a motive for the (sloppy) alteration, and in the meantime Microsoft has apologized.
What do you make of Microsoft's offense?
LK Bennett
Nuance
7 For All Mankind
I don't think it's necessarily right. The company is just trying to play to their audience, which you have to do to be successful. It's unfortunate that they feel the Polish are not ready to embrace another race. It could also be because perhaps they don't have many black people in the country, and they are just trying to appeal to the majority which is white. Who knows their true reasoning.
1It is called marketing. If 97% of your market is white then I am sure as hell going to have white people in my ads.
2I am for affirmative action, and think race is a tremendous issue that needs to be addressed in our culture. That said, I really don't have a problem with this. Not every ad needs to be held to the PC fires. They were merely tailoring their image for their market.
3They couldn't have just used a different picture? That's got to be seriously offensive to the model
4The original US graphic is captioned "Empower Your People - with the IT tools they need".
It's actually very progressive. The guy is mixed race, see?
5we had the opposite happen in toronto this summer... the city added in a black man's face to the photo on the cover of their Fun Guide to make it look more diverse, but did such a crap job photoshopping it that the result was pretty hilarious: tinyurl.com/torfun
6weffie, that is literally HI-larious!
I honestly despise when commercials and ads try to make the cast diverse. For example, you know those Olive Garden commercials where there is a black couple with a white couple. It's not that that doesn't happen, but I think its ridiculous because its SO obviously done for diversity. I honestly have never been at a restaurant and that has been the scenario. And yes, I have looked. I don't think that showing 2 black, Asian, white, or hispanic couples would make anyone want to go there or not go eat there. It's just extremely Beneton and I don't like it.
7how embarassing for MS
8weffie!
The digitally added guy's all, "Oh, hi. Just thought I'd drop in for the fun!"
9PC (I hate that term). It is called marketing, but many marketing companies fail in a big way to even look at/notice who is buying their stuff. I guess AA's or other POC's don't eat at Olive Garden... oh wait we do. Same thing w/movies and cars, women go to the movies too, or buy cars, yet everything seems to be marketed at the white male (even if they aren't the largest consumers). And don't even get me started on the MSM's love affair w/the over 65 or the boomer. For some reason when people talk about "race" especially "white" or "black" people leave their rationality, and empathy at the door. So Poland is 97 percent white (I'm not even sure if that is true), why is the Asian guy still in the add, for that matter many countries aren't to the point we are w/ gender equality, so why not cut out the woman?
All they had to do was to use a different picture, it wouldn't have cost that much(heck the price of an executive outing to a game cost more). The real story is that whole groups of people in that department thought it was okay to cut and past...
10Now we're forcing PCness onto other countries now? There are several countries in the world that are xenophobic, I'm not saying Poland is one of them, but you have to adjust your marketing campaign accordingly. Who cares about this, not every country in the world has to have every race.
11I forgot one thing... if this campaign originally had a white guy in it and the ad was in an African country, changing the race of that guy to black would certainly not offend anyone. Ugh, double standards.
12I forgot one thing... if this campaign originally had a white guy in it and the ad was in an African country, changing the race of that guy to black would certainly not offend anyone. Ugh, double standards.
People of Africa come in MANY MANY shades.
13The funniest thing is that as a computer company you would expect the photoshopping to be a lot better than it is!!!! Its shoddy at best!! Also, why not just take 2 photos? Ridiculous!!!
14This pisses me off but it made me laugh out loud too. It's just so stupid I have to laugh.
Also no surprise if you think about all of the psychological manipulations that go into advertising.
15Whoa. I did marketing in the USA for 20 years. Most of the time we were pressured to find the right number of ethnic people in one photo. It would turn into a nightmare sometimes to research and find the right one. I have heard stories about discrimination Germany and Poland. This looks very very very bad for Microsoft. And for Poland.
16Whoa. I did marketing in the US for 20 years. Usually I was pressured to find photo that included a certain amount of ethnic backgrounds. It could take a lot of time and energy but I always did my best to meet the demands to do it for all my ads. This looks very very very bad for Microsoft. They should have strict guidelines about their advertising regardless of their European counterparts ideas for target markets. This is Microsoft, and this is 2009. That's us folks. We make the rules for what gets left out or place in.
17oops. Sorry for the repeat. My post was lost in cyberspace for a few minutes........
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