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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
