Microsoft edits black man out of photo

[Crown Prince of Irony]

Seen here, with links to the sites in question. Apparently, one of Microsoft's enterprise-oriented English-language websites uses a photo that includes a fairly diverse cast: a white woman giving a presentation to a black man, and an Asian man. Nice touchy-feely marketing photo that lets enterprise customers know that Microsoft understands their diverse needs.

For the Poland version of the site, they took the photo, and (wait for it). . . they did a horrible cut-and-paste job and inserted a white guy's head on the black guy's body. They didn't even bother to change the guy's hand! I could understand if MSFT decided to shoot a different photo, or sub a different stock image, to better reflect the demographic makeup of the desired target market. Personally I think it should be a non issue, but I would at least understand the marketing rationale.

But a hack cut-and-paste job that my 9-year-old daughter could improve on? Yeesh.

Not posting this in GD, because, frankly, I don't really think there's a debate here - Microsoft (or someone acting on their behalf) made a boneheaded move. A kind of funny, yet slightly disturbing, boneheaded move.

[Superfluous Parentheses]

No fear, Photoshopdisasters is on the case

[Colophon]

Originally Posted by Superfluous Parentheses

No fear, Photoshopdisasters is on the case

Heh - their captions are usually very funny, and that one's a beauty!

[Sunspace]

See, that's the problem. They didn't use Photoshop. They used MS Paint.

Seriously, would having a black person in marketing materials for this kind of industry lose MS business in Poland? Or is that just some marketing person's paranoia?

[Apollyon]

Originally Posted by Crown Prince of Irony

Nice touchy-feely marketing photo that lets enterprise customers know that Microsoft understands their diverse needs... Microsoft (or someone acting on their behalf) made a boneheaded move.

Well, it's boneheaded if touchy-feely / diverse is the intent, rather than normal / local / "our kind of software" / whatever.

If the idea is to show a typical business meeting (whatever typical means) in the locale of the language (Poland) then having people in the photo who look untypical for the Polish locale would jar the viewer, and reinforce the foreign origin of the product.

(Buying "local-made" is a fairly common idea and Americans sometimes seem to forget that to them US products are local, whereas to the rest of us they are foreign imports).

If I saw the US version presented as local content here then the man they replaced would seem out-of-place to me too -- not that we don't have people of African descent in NZ, 'cos we do, but they are fairly rare. Replace him with someone recognizably Polynesian or Maori and I wouldn't bat an eye... also the skin tones would match better.

(Either way it's a completely sucky photo-retouch).

[Simplicio]

Originally Posted by Apollyon

If the idea is to show a typical business meeting (whatever typical means) in the locale of the language (Poland) then having people in the photo who look untypical for the Polish locale would jar the viewer, and reinforce the foreign origin of the product.

Are East-Asians much more typical in Poland then blacks? It's a little weird that they pasted over the black guy but kept the Asian one, neither look particularly Polish.

[Crown Prince of Irony]

Originally Posted by Apollyon

Well, it's boneheaded if touchy-feely / diverse is the intent, rather than normal / local / "our kind of software" / whatever.

If the idea is to show a typical business meeting (whatever typical means) in the locale of the language (Poland) then having people in the photo who look untypical for the Polish locale would jar the viewer, and reinforce the foreign origin of the product.

Sorry for the short-hand - I say "touchy feely" to mean that marketing imagery is all about making the target market feel comfortable with their choice to go with a specific vendor.

In the US, that means "let's show the target market that we value diversity." Frankly, I think it's kind of silly - I don't doubt that the combination of a white woman, a black middle-aged man and a young Asian man was chosen after spending many hourse going over demo numbers and endless-focus-groups.

If, in Poland, the intent is to show the target market "you're buying from someone you can be comfortable with", then I get a decision to go with a more representative image. But to remove the black man and leave the Asian man, and then do such a bad job of it, gives an obvious impression: Microsoft thinks Poles don't like black people. If I were a Pole, I'd be pissed.

[Arnold Winkelried]

I'm no photoshop expert, but the picture on the Polish site doesn't look to me like an obvious Photoshop hack job. I wonder how many people would have thought that it was a C&P job without seeing the original. To be honest, after looking at both pictures, they both seem "off" to me. Maybe the "original" is also a C&P job on the head of the middle person?

[cwthree]

Originally Posted by Arnold Winkelried

I'm no photoshop expert, but the picture on the Polish site doesn't look to me like an obvious Photoshop hack job. I wonder how many people would have thought that it was a C&P job without seeing the original. To be honest, after looking at both pictures, they both seem "off" to me. Maybe the "original" is also a C&P job on the head of the middle person?

Same thought here. The middle guy in the English-language version looks wrong to me as well - he seems to be missing a neck, or to have a neck of very odd proportions indeed.

[Crown Prince of Irony]

If you look to the left of Cracker McWhitey's (just assigning a name at random for reference purposes) neck, you'll see where the photoshopper copied and pasted the windowsill, in a piss-poor attempt to fill in the space left by removing the other man's admittedly very large head. You'll also see that the left shoulder is in shadow, yet the left side of the guy's face is well-lit.

The middle guy in the original photo, while having the aforementioned gigantic cranium, looks lit correctly at least, and his skin tone matches his hand. Plus there isn't any obvious evidence of tampering in the margins around his head, which is a big giveaway.

[bengangmo]

Originally Posted by Apollyon

Well, it's boneheaded if touchy-feely / diverse is the intent, rather than normal / local / "our kind of software" / whatever.

If the idea is to show a typical business meeting (whatever typical means) in the locale of the language (Poland) then having people in the photo who look untypical for the Polish locale would jar the viewer, and reinforce the foreign origin of the product.

(Buying "local-made" is a fairly common idea and Americans sometimes seem to forget that to them US products are local, whereas to the rest of us they are foreign imports).

If I saw the US version presented as local content here then the man they replaced would seem out-of-place to me too -- not that we don't have people of African descent in NZ, 'cos we do, but they are fairly rare. Replace him with someone recognizably Polynesian or Maori and I wouldn't bat an eye... also the skin tones would match better.

(Either way it's a completely sucky photo-retouch).

Thumbs up to this. Also MS ads always seem to be desperately inclusive to me, which is very jarring and fake....

[Elendil's Heir]

Hey, they restored the black guy on the Polish site! http://www.microsoft.com/poland/busi...y/default.mspx

=Whew!=

The world is safe for diversity once more.

[Captain_Awesome]

Originally Posted by Elendil's Heir

Hey, they restored the black guy on the Polish site! http://www.microsoft.com/poland/busi...y/default.mspx

=Whew!=

The world is safe for diversity once more.

Only if you have a JavaScript enabled world, for the time being. If you have NoScript you can flip back and forth between diversity and ethnic cleansing at least 4 times before getting bored.

[Argent Towers]

There's also a really poorly-photoshopped Israeli version that's even worse than the Polish one.

With all their billions of dollars, can't Microsoft do a better job of this stuff?

[Manduck]

Originally Posted by Crown Prince of Irony

If you look to the left of Cracker McWhitey's (just assigning a name at random for reference purposes) neck, you'll see where the photoshopper copied and pasted the windowsill, in a piss-poor attempt to fill in the space left by removing the other man's admittedly very large head. You'll also see that the left shoulder is in shadow, yet the left side of the guy's face is well-lit.

The middle guy in the original photo, while having the aforementioned gigantic cranium, looks lit correctly at least, and his skin tone matches his hand. Plus there isn't any obvious evidence of tampering in the margins around his head, which is a big giveaway.

Also, in the original, everybody is looking in the same direction. In the photoshopped version, the guy in the middle is looking somewhere else. It makes it seem like he's not paying attention. And his neck must hurt like hell.

[Ruby]

Nah, he's the ADA representative. Crooked neck branch.

Or they could be just representing racial diversity by showing a white guy with black hands.

Good Og, MS has a bajillion dollars at their disposal and they hire a 7 year old to photoshop their ads?

[Crown Prince of Irony]

Originally Posted by Ruby

Nah, he's the ADA representative. Crooked neck branch.

Or they could be just representing racial diversity by showing a white guy with black hands.

Or, better yet, a black man with vitiligo on his face, and scoliosis of the neck! That's like the diversity hat trick right there!!

On preview - anyone notice that the new "re-deversified" Polish site now has a text box background that's the same dimensions as the English version, but the Polish text stretches wayyy out there into the image?

MSFT just needs to stop. Please, just. . . stop. Hire a web dev and use a bunch of inoffensive stock clip art, and just rebuild the freaking page already.

[Crown Prince of Irony]

Aaaand the fun's over: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...J9oIQD9AAAMT82. Despite my plea for it to stop, this kind of stuff is much more entertaining when it drags on and on for days.

But nooo - Microsoft had to be a good global corporate citizen, and nut up and admit they screwed the poochski on this one.

[Eyebrows 0f Doom]

What the hell is up with the original photo!? Check out the Black guy's hand. He looks like he's either wearing a leather glove or is a wax model.

[wierdaaron]

Maybe they just don't have black people in Poland. Ever think of that? Everybody's got to jump to conclusions... RACISTS!

[tesseract]

Originally Posted by Argent Towers

There's also a really poorly-photoshopped Israeli version that's even worse than the Polish one.

With all their billions of dollars, can't Microsoft do a better job of this stuff?

Nice.

[Jamaika a jamaikaiaké]

This reminds me of when The University of Wisconsin added a Black Guy to their ad brochure: http://15.media.tumblr.com/TvWO4btir...qo1_r1_500.jpg

[wierdaaron]

Happens a lot.

http://www.11points.com/Misc/11_Phot...pped_In_or_Out

Except #2 is just wrong, she's wearing a yellow undershirt.

[elmwood]

Originally Posted by Jamaika a jamaikaiaké

This reminds me of when The University of Wisconsin added a Black Guy to their ad brochure: http://15.media.tumblr.com/TvWO4btir...qo1_r1_500.jpg

Life imitates art.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38641

From the article:

Added Tompkins: "If you think it's hard to find a picture of a black guy, try finding a smiling black guy!"

[Beware of Doug]

I love that Onion bit. Seriously. I go to ISU. We have a semi-buttload of Asians, a sprinkling of Blacks, and every now and then you meet somebody from Chile or Ukraine or some such place, but we really are pretty damn Whitebread.

Then again, yesterday, I was crossing the campus and saw a Black woman riding a bicycle. I lived in the NYC metroplex 19 years and never saw that. And yes...she was smiling.

[PlainJain]

So the Asian guy doesn't get a computer?

[mecaenas]

A lot of mega corporations' stock photo collections seems painfully sensitive and politically correct to the point of desperation. I thought the whole point of photos with people in them was to give their customers and potential customers situations they can relate to with people who look like them and people they know.

I think Photoshopping was a dumb move when they could have simply browsed their stock photo library and made a more accurate choice.

However, given that MS has now taken the politically correct US stock photo and are using it in the Polish market whose demographics bears no resemblance to the people in the photo*, I think that's much worse than replacing the black guy. It shows that MS can only think in their own terms and point of view from within their own country. Worse still it shows that MS couldn't be arsed to make an effort in understanding other markets nor could it be bothered to spend any money on them. It demonstrates that MS doesn't care about its customers in other markets.

*Polish 96.7%, German 0.4%, Belarusian 0.1%, Ukrainian 0.1%, other and unspecified 2.7%

[mecaenas]

Incidentally, it's pretty easy to spot stock photos of Europeans and Americans when used in the Australian market too - it's a mix of things like buildings, clothing and general environment. It all just seems so hollow and contrived.

[Rayne Man]

So black men are now OK in Poland, but not homosexual elephants

[CalMeacham]

They're apologizing now:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tec_mi...poland_picture

LOS ANGELES – Software giant Microsoft Corp. is apologizing for altering a photo on its Web site to change the race of one of the people shown in the picture.

A photo on the Seattle-based company's U.S. Web site shows two men, one Asian and one black, and a white woman seated at a conference room table. But on the Web site of Microsoft's Polish business unit, the black man's head has been replaced with that of a white man. The color of his hand remains unchanged.

The photo editing sparked criticism online. Some bloggers said Poland's ethnic homogeneity may have played a role in changing the photo.

"We are looking into the details of this situation," Microsoft spokesperson Lou Gellos said in a statement Tuesday. "We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the image."

AFAICT, they're not admitting that they (at Microsoft US, or anywhere else, for that matter) were responsible. They're "looking into it." at least they're acknowledging the problem.










Many years ago, the game Master Mind was marketed in the US with a cover photo of a bearded man seated at a shiny, reflective table. He was dressed in a white suit, with his fingertips together, and looked as if his IQ was 1000. Standing behind him, also in white, was a woman. In one version she was Indian, in another, Oriental. The box simply exuded a sense of "International League of Really Smart People" -- We Dress in white, come from all over, and can beat you at chess while we're still asleep.

The Polish version of the box was different -- the whole "international" vibe was missing. It showed a man seated at that same shiny-topped table, and a woman standing behind him, but they both looked Slavic. What really got me was that they wore jeans and denim jackets. This was before Solidarnoscz and the fall of the Soviet Union, so that denim provided the international touch -- only intellectuals could easily get out of the country and get denim clothes. But they were both definitely Polish people.

I wonder if the same mindset was responsible for that photo hackjob?

[Arnold Winkelried]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

Many years ago, the game Master Mind was marketed in the US with a cover photo of a bearded man seated at a shiny, reflective table. He was dressed in a white suit, with his fingertips together, and looked as if his IQ was 1000. Standing behind him, also in white, was a woman.

You mean Bill Woodward and Cecilia Fung? I remember them (especially her) well.

[CalMeacham]

You mean Bill Woodward and Cecilia Fung? I remember them (especially her) well.

That looks like one pair. As I said, another cover had an Indian woman standing and a seated man in a white suit, who may have been the same.

The Polish box used completely different blonde , Slavic-featured people.

Bill, who despite now being in his late seventies, looks remarkably unchanged from 1972, says that in addition to the photograph that was selected some were also taken with a cat sitting on his lap.

Did they want people to think Ernst Stavro Blofeld played Mastermind?


"How About a little game, 007?"

[runner pat]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

Did they want people to think Ernst Stavro Blofeld played Mastermind?


"How About a little game, 007?"

Wouldn't work. He'd start monologuing and give it all away.

[Terminus Est]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

That looks like one pair. As I said, another cover had an Indian woman standing and a seated man in a white suit, who may have been the same.

The Polish box used completely different blonde , Slavic-featured people.




Did they want people to think Ernst Stavro Blofeld played Mastermind?


"How About a little game, 007?"

Cal, you are perhaps thinking of Super Mastermind, whose cover did indeed feature a white man and an Indian woman, striking a pose very similar to that of the original Mastermind.

ETA: Found an image that shows Polish Mastermind: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/492403

[elmwood]

In my hometown, there is a long-established and deep-rooted animosity between Polish-Americans and blacks. Really, it's Polish-Americans towards blacks. I wonder, if that animosity is rooted in Polish culture and such marketing would be perceived as turning people off from Microsoft products, MS just catered to the racism of their customers, much as advertising and other services catering to Mexican-Americans consider machismo (impossibly deep male baritone voices being dominant in ads on Univision, "imprime dos para Español" voice mail prompts, in-store announcements in Spanish, and so on).

Again, I'm not saying "Poles are racist", but I'm asking "if they are, is MS pandering to that racism by 'shopping the stock photo?"

[Jamicat]

Originally Posted by Terminus Est

ETA: Found an image that shows Polish Mastermind: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/492403

Back then they used a real Photographer with film and real models.
Not a computer photo/modeling simulator.

There were people that were concept artists, set designers, photographers, film developers, paste up, post production, editors...ect.

All those jobs are gone and stuck in little pull down menus.

Another YAY for the digital age.

[Angel of Doubt]

Originally Posted by PlainJain

So the Asian guy doesn't get a computer?

This wins.

[CalMeacham]

Cal, you are perhaps thinking of Super Mastermind, whose cover did indeed feature a white man and an Indian woman, striking a pose very similar to that of the original Mastermind.

ETA: Found an image that shows Polish Mastermind: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/492403

I'm pretty sure the Indian Woman was not on Super MasterMind. I think it may have been on the cover of a travel edition.

And, while that's a good find, that's not the Polish couple I referred to. As you can clearly see, they're not wearing denim, as I described. But I'm not surprised that there is at least one more edition with the intellectual-looking man and woman in similar poses.

[Argent Towers]

Originally Posted by Jamicat

Back then they used a real Photographer with film and real models.
Not a computer photo/modeling simulator.

There were people that were concept artists, set designers, photographers, film developers, paste up, post production, editors...ect.

All those jobs are gone and stuck in little pull down menus.

Another YAY for the digital age.

I agree, and the aesthetic quality of mundane stuff like advertisements has suffered because of it. My dad has this incredible Taschen anthology of 1970s print advertisements; it's just unbelievable to look at the way the ads looked back then and compare them to the ones now. There was such incredible style to it.

[LSLGuy]

I don't work for Microsoft, but I do have occasion to attend events on their Redmond campus several times a year. Their company really does look like their marketing photos (but much less well-dressed). I swear they're more diverse than the world is.

Working in that environment for long would sure get you in the mindset that a meeting without both genders, and at least 5 skin colors / eye shape combinations is statistically impossible.

Which would really skew your thinking about a racially homogenous and borderline xenophobic culture. Or at least cause you to move your cutoff for what you consider to be a racially homogenous and borderline xenophobic culture.