And here i am, serving 25 years to life

-TaVi

Granted - it was a bad execution and a bad decision to change the head. Better to have a different photo with entirely different models - and yes - white models for a country that is 99.9% white and such issues as integration, racism and such do not exist within the society and never have. Forcing racism on Microsoft's actions shows forcing American mentality and problems on cultures that don't have does problems. It's like having aliens come over and make us think like them whether we want to or understand their ways or not.

So if you are in your mid-40's, own a luxury car, have a job making 85K or higher, white, live in the part of town where its marginally trendy, get your designer coffee from the corner bakery, buy online 3 times a month... blah blah blah, Advertisers are going to categorize you and put you in this demographic box, track all the things you do with behavioral targeting, using online and print ads, all the while making you think you are original. Don't get it twisted, the puppet is still being manipulated from the strings.

If we go with the premise that "market research" reflects that Poland needs to see Caucasians in advertising, so they can associate brands such as Microsoft, all the while making Polish people feel warm and fuzzy while buying Microsoft products... so be it. Microsoft wants to feed this self-perpetuating stagnant perception for the Polish people to snack on, I get it. Sure, let's agree to take the black guy out, he doesn't "fit" in that specific picture frame, and bottom line, it won't sell. Consumers like to shop their look, and in this case, it's definitely not some black guy sitting in a conference room using Microsoft products in Poland of all places.

I am not attacking the Polish people. I'm just pointing out that Microsoft likes to use cliche stereotypes, and 19th century marketing strategies to sell their outdated ads.

Maybe that's why Apple is gaining market share globally, they appeal to the universality of the consumer.

Microsoft needs to get with the times.

If you are localizing an ad to a population that is 80% Korean and 20% Latino, you probably focus on Koreans and Latinos. If you are targeting an ad at a population that is 97% African and 3% Caucasian, you have ads that primarily feature black people, with an occasional token white person. And if you're targeting an ad at a population that's something like 95% Polish or other Caucasian and 5% Vietnamese, you use mostly Caucasians with a sprinkling of Vietnamese.

As far as I can tell some of the posts in this thread are implying that there is something wrong with Poland, simply because the population is mainly Poles. You have to have your head up your ass to think that, because Poland might be as racially diverse as Western Europe if it weren't for the fact that they spent half the twentieth century being assf*cked by the Nazis and the Soviets.

The Polish didn't enslave black people and force them to work on their plantations. They didn't even colonize and oppress the third world like Spain, England, France, etc. On the contrary, Poland is still trying to recover from its own poverty and oppression.

So Americans need to back off and let them be.

The problem is that we want to have equality, well guess what superchi, you can't have it ONE WAY!!!!!!!!!!

There are organizations like the rainbow coalition and the likes that protect the african american. Do you hear anything for the whites? Asians, Latinos, etc?

NO. That is the problem. If we are american, we need to be american and stop having the media and corporation split the country.

So why would a black person be Photoshopped out of a picture, so they can be replaced with a white head and keep the black hands?? I think it's insulting to the Polish people's intelligence. It's the 21st Century and Microsoft felt obliged to perpetuate this 'facade' that Polish people can't see blacks in advertisements or they will flip out because Poland is a sanctuary of homogeneous people with the same skin color... Like Microsoft needs to shoulder the weight of the world to shelter the Polish people from images that reflect blacks in professions where they participate everyday in business meetings through their ads. The shear ridiculousness of it all is why this even got press.

It's stupid obviously whoever made the choice to do it. If you are going to do it, don't keep the black hand on a body with a white face. DUH.

Anyways, yes of course there are racist implications. I don't care how oblivious white people are to this fact. They don't face this kind of discrimination where someone is going to Photoshop a white person out of a advertisement in a photo. It's ironic if white people say it's not racist, when a proportionate number of white Americans in their family roots and unfortunately have a long history of racial oppression, slavery, and any other human rights violation we can think of by subjecting non-whites e.g. American Indians, Japanese and blacks have been put through in our history. So to think we won't have that same mentality cross over in a Polish advertisement is totally baloney.

If all things are equal, why isnt there other culture sites for the above link. Yet we don't even comment on this type of activity.

Check Microsoft's website for North Africa (an American/European looking Caucasian is featured - I supposed they'll say that's the predominant type of person in No. Africa) http://www.microsoft.com/northafrica/default.aspx

South Africa's MS site features now one - guess they didn't want to touch that.

Yet a quick check of Microsoft's Asian sites features Asians.

Hmmm... Why is that?

I wrote an article on my blog about it
http://tinyurl.com/mym7ad

I want to know which one of those 3 people is gay and what are their religions! I mean it. Why doesn't it clearly say that too?! They should be clearly labeled! Which one of them is a lefty? How dare they not state that they are lefty-compliant?!
I'm gonna sue them!

As for the Polish version - it's localization. Try having black men on a software ad for the Eskimos.

Get a brain people.

Americans blow this out of proportion. I'm Polish living in Canada and I can see how people in North America can get offended by this change. However if you do not know the culture for which this ad (change) was targeted, there is no reason to say that's racist. There are very few black people in Poland. The culture is very much homogeneous in terms of skin color and normally one would never think about hiring a black person simply because there would be very few and only in the largest cities. So this is target marketing. Besides, because of the homogeneous history of Poland, people's perception of other skin colors is skewed and many of them, how should I say, are simply racist (which is not necessarily a bad thing). In Poland a black person is considered exotic. It will simply take time to adjust to the fact that black people are all over the globe and can also exist in Poland.

On the other hand the ad is crap anyways and the replacement of the black person with white simply horrible ... LOL !

whatever... chill...

Maciek

The light is coming from the right yet the light on the guy in the middle in the changed photo is coming from the left.

That's why the picture does not "read" and looks planted in, which is exactly what it was

Such behaviour shouldn't be acceptable at all in our societies and consumers should consider banning racist companies from their suppliers list.

Racist? Definitely. In a more and more internationally intertwined world, especially with the internet, it really ought to click that your target audience is not your only audience.

Racism exist systemically in all cultures and in all countries. It's an underlying factor that people take for granted because people are "homogenous" or because "it's over, so last century." When you have to change a photograph through digital manipulation to fit your demographics, that is racism. Period. It's saying, "we do not acknowledge your existence." You want localization? Get a local photographer to take a photo of your local demographic.

And let's talk about asians. In Hollywood movies, Asians are rarely ever the main protagonist. And if they are, it's usually some martial arts flick where they are portrayed as not greatly educated. And even that role is increasingly taken away. Forbidden Kingdom stars a white guy. Dragonball Evolution's Goku, a clearly asian character, is portrayed bby a white guy. And in the upcoming The Last Airbender, the entire group of protagonists are protrayed by white kids, when it should be an asian and 2 inuits.

Are they playing on the stereotype of asians and technology? Do they think Polish people are uncomfortable with black people? In the end, it doesn’t matter what the reasoning behind the switch. They specifically singled out the black person for no other possible reason than that he was a black person. That is racist. Marketing demographic strategy excuses be damned—it’s racist.

If you look close you will also notice how the black man’s hand has been lightened… in both photos! Again, I have to ask: what is their thinking behind this? Is it intentional? Yes. Is it racist? Yes. Is it a bit bewildering that a corporation the size of Microsoft would be so obvious about it? Yeah, a bit

I'm a dark skinned African American and my fiance's family is from Poland. It's true that a good number Polish people have never seen a black person before. Not necessarily a bad thing, just the way it is. Makes for an interesting "first encounter" to say the least.

Now if this happened in an ad for the US, I'd probably have a different take on it.

If it was 'localized' they would have taken a different photo.

Nice job not bothering to change the hand, moron.

Instead of going on istockphoto and paying what, another $3-$10, for a more appropriate photo, instead someone does a hack job at photoshopping the level of diversity for the targeted country. And "hack job" it is.

Come on, this is Microsoft, they can afford two royalty-free images.

Poland may not even have any black people, so removing the black guy from the picture may make more sense for Polish.

Why does everything have to be about race? Forget about race for one moment, would you please? Seriously...

While it's fair to call out the image for what it says about race and society, and fair to be vaguely critical of MS for not doing better quality control, it's kind of silly to draw large conclusions about Microsoft's "progressiveness" from this incident.

If we're going to talk about whitewashing, we could set our sights on places with much more pervasive problems - like Hollywood. Nobody says a word when a cast of white celebrities (with mediocre voices) are selected to voice Japanese characters in the US releases of Miyazaki films, but they freak out over a crappy photoshop job by Microsoft? The good folks at www.racebending.com are doing some great work on whitewashing issues, and more general race issues, in Hollywood.

On the one hand, if everything is whitewashed, how are Poles to get a greater experience of diversity. On the other hand, local players would never pick a photo with a black guy, and the role of localization is to create ads that are in tune with what local marketers would do.

It's not racism. It's localization.

If you are targeting an ad for asian countries, you have asian people participate in it, is that racism? If you are targeting an african country, you would have the ad made by black participants...

It is not racism.

I think that Microsoft's move is not racism. I think it is tuning the ad to the potential customer (ad target). You would not advertise A/C to the Eskimos, you would not advertise toothbrush to the toothless...
Bear in mind that 99,9% of Poles are white (Caucassian). The remaining 0,1% is in majority Asian. It means that the majority of Polish people have never ever seen a Black man in person. Not to speak about middle-aged Black person... (most of the Black people seen in Poland are students coming from Africa).
So the Poles perceive the "tuned" ad like appealing to them, whereas the original one is completely out of their world. They cannot identify with people photographed and in consequence would not buy the product.
Take care.

Personally, I find the American obsession with getting the racial mix right for every corporate picture rather weird and must present some major problems for art directots. As for the Photoshopping...as clumsy as the gender/ethnic mix.

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