A reader sent in links to two identical Microsoft marketing sites. One is a standard U.S./English version, the other in Polish.
The image is identical, except Microsoft has removed the head of the black man in the U.S. version and photoshopped in a white guy’s head instead. The Asian man and white woman made the cut to the Polish site unscathed. Clicking back and forth between the two pages is actually kind of creepy.
The original model’s hand was left in the Polish version of the ad.
Photoshop Disasters, which also wrote about this, has some great comments:
“I like how that computer monitor isn’t plugged into anything.”
“Leave the white Macbook front and center in a MicroSoft Ad? You’d have thought that was the first thing they’d Photoshop out…”
“It’s okay if he has a black hand.”
Update: We’re taking this completely off the rails. Read, photoshop, and win a free Bing Tshirt.
I understand they’re trying to reflect the local demographic, but this is pure laziness, i could’ve done a better job without pay!
yeah, thats what it is. cuz there’s lots more Asians in Poland than black people
@Alan Brown
I invite you to Ochota (Warsaw district).
You could be confident – the’re more
Here in Delhi, it very common for this type of marketing to be used at the street level. Very often, merchants would cut off the heads of chickens and sew duck heads on to sell as more money because ducks be worth more than chicken.
o.0
There are probably more asians because there are also more asian restaurants that sprout up everywhere. Also, asians are more likely to be geeky tech people in general. But there are also probably not very many African immigrants in Poland.
Beg pardon? There are no black people in Poland? Or there are more Asians in Poland than black people? Nonsense. This is arrant racism and nothing more.
@ Suri: exactly. And why am I not surprised to see such ignorant comments on an American site. Earth to America: Africans are very present in Europe – including Europe (esp. Poland).
Get a clue.
wait. who should get a clue? techcrunch? our readers? microsoft? black people in poland? confused. you got the hate going nicely, now you just have to direct it properly.
Omg that was funny!
First time I ever posted a message here, but your message made me laugh!
Excellent riposte
Lots of black people in Europe? Yes. In Poland? Doesn’t sound right. This from Wikipedia:
Ethnic groups in Poland
Polish 96.7%, Silesian 0.5%, German 0.4%, Byelorussian 0.1%, Ukrainian 0.1%, other 0.7%, not declared 2.0%
This from a Polish guy giving advice to an American black man moving to Poland: “…for most people you’d meet you’d probably be the first ever black person met”. (http://www.poli...ng-poland-2893/)
Conclusion: No racism here, even though many would love that to be true so they can have something to write about. Microsoft could have hired some local models, though.
these are nationalities not skin colors so it doesn’t prove anything!!
I agree with the fact that it’s probably not racism though… they’re obviously not that dump!
my friend just came back from playing football in the polish football league (american football) and everyone acted like they never saw a black guy in their life.
one girl told him “he was a real ni**a” because he had waves
As a Pole I can tell you that you don’t see a black man every day on the street. At least in my city (600k of people that is big for Poland) in my family town (20k) there was one but i don’t think he lives there anymore. There are much more Asian people in Poland. So Yes its just a poorly executed try to adjust local ad to reflect the local demographics
There are tens of thousands Asian people in Poland who live here without Polish citizenship. They are not taken into account in those figures.
I could literally take a long walk in Warsaw and stumble upon a few hundreds of them. There is an enormous cheap marketplace, almost in the city center, where many of them make a living.
There are a lot less African people in Poland, it is extremely rare to meet a black non-student in Poland, as they mostly come here for educational purposes.
the whole idealism of an international corporation in marketing is to reflect how “internationally” widespread the company is… I don’t see how you could justify this stunt as “market preparation” they are selling technology here, and if their consumers have a problem with how reality is (AND REALITY IS African Americans do exist in the world), then those consumers should not be allowed to judge that corporation based on an advertisement.
and for the idiot who said the tech industry is full of white guys and computers … It was an African American who invented the first 1ghz processor ….not saying much but, look into ibm’s staff .. look into hp’s staff, then look into the worlds staff …
if someone has a problem purchasing an item
because of the ethnicity of who “might” have taken part in the products existence, they should
not be allowed to touch any other products.
..good marketing or bad marketing, a company should show good moral values if they wish to stay in business, or at least give the consumers that hate them reason to not use other alternatives ( ubuntu .. freebsd )
The Poles are playing American football. I miss the Cold War.
Especially in Poland? LOL.
Hi,
I’m a native Polish. There are VERY FEW black people in Poland. The number of Asian people is probably a little higher, but it’s also very small. Most of Polish people have seen black people only in TV.
I’m polish…and I work in marketing agency. I lived in Poland most of my life and I can tell you- you are judging to quickly! There are people from all around the world coming to Poland to study. Of course it’s not like London for instance but still. Most of Polish people are multilingual and have a great interest in other cultures. And yeah there isn’t that many black people there (now someone will accuse me of calling them like that:). I really think there wasn’t bad intention. From marketing point of view we do localise our creatives to suit different audience and appeal better. For instance one of my client has a website in 5 different languages and to target local users, each country has a different image (smiling girl). UK is more dark blond, american – blond, etc – they just look more like a majority of girls from the specific country…What they should have done is to have a completely different creative, with yeah polish looking like guy and i’m sure noone would say anything. The photoshop action was a cheap way of doing it:) and very very bad! I couldn’t agree more. But look around and you notice that in fact most of the companies do that-they adopt their ads to appeal to local people and that’s what happened in this case. Punish them for stupidity but not for racism! Because we are not!
Where is the gypsy guy?
Horrible. The person in charge should worry.
Photoshop? are you kidding me, they fuck** used paint. It also looks like the white guy was driving a convertible before he got beheaded, too much sun on his face.
What was the point of using ** in your comment?
What’s wrong with using ** ?
Isn’t the point of using random characters in a curse word… to make not be a curse word?
HAHA… correct use of ** when applied to Fucking: F**cking, or perhaps Fu**ing…
What it there are children watching, everyone knows children don’t know what ** are fuck face!
No, that’s not the point. You see, by using “**” instead of “in” I save techcrunch’s servers the processing time it’ll take them to replace the word or flag the comment, this uses less energy and helps save the environment…lmao.
This whole bit of the thread has me in stitches, I hadn’t laughed so much in ages. I’m not even sure what is so amazingly funny..
Thanks Miguel and rest of people involved.
Genius.
laughing like crazy … Thanks you guys!
Hilarious! I can bet it is paint
LOL @ the “leave the black hand in” comment. I didn’t even catch it.. Now that I look closer at the cropped head; the Photoshop work doesn’t even look that good.
James F.
TwitterBackground.com
It is perfectly ok that they customize local ads to reflect the local demographics but they really should spend a bit more time with Photoshop.
Funny and good catch!
Michael,
You are reading way too much into this. Amazing what someone will dig up when they hate Microsoft.
The advertising world is fake! Period. There is not a single thing that is not photoshopped or made to look better:
1. All fast food commercials use plastic food and not the actual food since the actual food never looks that good.
2. Apple iPhone commercials – Bump does not load that fast or work that fast even on the 3GS. Neither does the Slide application. Video editing is not that quick and the uploading to YouTube is definitely not that fast.
3. All apparel ads are photoshopped. Ever seen the originals of the photoshoots? I have and they never look that good.
4. Most landscape photography is “enhanced” with photoshop to bring out the colors and make the scene more vibrant.
As far as replacing the head goes, its called demographic targeting. Whether we like it or not, it happens. That is why most ads in hispanic areas in Los Angeles are in spanish and most fast food ads in the inner city feature black people. No one should get offended about it.
Granted, they could have done a better job with the hand, but who really cares. No one will pay attention to it in the real world which is what this ad is meant for and not us tech geeks who like to point these things out.
So it happens- that makes it ok? You’re comparing racial cleansing to plastic food and iPhone commercials. Are you implying that there are no black people in Poland? And why is it ok to keep the Asian guy in but not the black guy? Does the typical Pole look Chinese?
I am not comparing racial cleansing to plastic food or approving of it. I simply said that this is the advertising world and that happens all the time. It is done based on demographics and racial profiling. Whether we like it or not, it is part of that industry. We do not know what the real reason was for removing the head. It could have been anything ranging from demographics to contractual issues with the model (the black gentleman) not allowing his face to be used outside of the united states. I have worked with enough modeling agencies to know that their contracts state exactly what can be done and what can not be done with their image.
We should not be enraged by this and it should not bother us until we know the details.
To insinuate that Microsoft did this purposely and with hatred is just plainly wrong.
of course they didn’t do it with hatred. they did it for demographic and marketing reasons.
Yeah, I have to say that people buy from people that look like them because it makes them feel comfortable. With that said, if they were selling Microsoft to a white population they would want more whites in the photo.
Poland is very predominantly white (Polish). So I think they were targeting the ad to their audience. If it were an ad to go up in Miami, you would want Latinos in the ad right?
Call that racist if you like, but you probably pay more attention to ads by people that remind you of yourself too!
And with that said, it is a little cheesy to crop the photo’s but god bless microsoft for cutting costs!
Must be embarassing that they were ‘found out’ and posted on the web like this! – HA HA HA Microsoft! Hope you made your sales in Poland!
Black people in Poland ? Why go there ? The Polish are leaving Poland in droves!
Actually the economy in Poland has been weathering the recession quite well in comparison to many other European countries and the emmigration numbers have started to reverse in the last year.
I feel like you are beginning to expose yourself as an idiot. I feel very fortunate that you are not associated with the international marketing campaign that I am currently involved in. The bottom line for Microsoft is to make more money! This has absolutely nothing to do with racism. Get with the program
hate microsoft?
i mean, i’m literally wearing a bing tshirt today.
Picture Please…
That reads gnid!
gnid is an awesome decision engine.
GNID is actually a real estate thing in India. I googled for it and http://www.gnid.in/ was the second result.
Interesting – I Binged it, and it was 6th.
Actually fast food ads do use real food otherwise it would be false advertising. They just bring in gourmet chefs with a lot of experience in decorating to make the food look as perfect as possible.
No, actually. I’m a photographer, and It’s either fake food or real food so horribly manipulated to look nice with chemicals(like hairspray) that it’s not edible.
Actually if you eat at fast food in Japan, what you order does actually look like the pictures in the advertising.
Has anybody heard about demographics and identification to the target audience at TC? Diversity in the US is different from diversity in Poland, nothing wrong with that.
Now for the poor paintshop job… MS Poland could have restaged a shoot for sure.
LOL. This is too funny!
I just think its a horrible job of photoshopping – the white guys head doesnt look like it belongs with the body at all
The tech world alas is not very friendly to black people. It’s still largely comprised of a bunch of white guys playing with computers. Michael Arrington, how many black people do you have on the TechCrunch staff?
none. our polish readership is just too strategically important
The ad does fit the taste of the local demographic better..eastern europe is extremely racist and backwards compared to other parts of europe…a black face wouldnt go down too well with the public I expect…
what does it have to do with being backwards? im sure in asian countries they pick mostly asians, in africa africans and etc, why does it have to be a black guy in a country where they probably dont even make one percent?
No, most Asian ads have white people. Never a black person.
The ads with “white people” are usually marketing ploys to seem more American. In general, caucasian americans are seen as having more wealth and power than the rest of the world, so it is an attempt to look cool and trendy.
Careful not to generalize Eastern Europeans.
But it’s okay to generalize Americans.
Err, yeah. Also, penguins!
In Soviet Russia people do not generalize. The generations generally degenerate.
Umm … nope, that didn’t come out right, did it?
Lets not beat around the bush, eastern europeans when it comes to race relations are backwards in comparison. This is admitted by eastern europeans themselves and black people who have visited those countries.
See here http://www.dail...otball-ra_sport
and
http://pitchinv...see-on-the-bbc/
and
http://www.tele.../2300751/Andrey
and
http://www.dail...86908-20768807/
In regards to eastern europe you have to say it stems from the socio-economic disappointment countries there have experienced since 91 but cmon sometimes lets call a spade a spade(no pun)
Haha, I laughed
No Black People On TC staff?? Im Half Mexican but I talk Black (from Oakland)… Hire Me.
HAHAHAHAHA… I just made myself laugh.
really? on a thread dissecting a “racist” act, you have the audacity to say you “talk” Black??
Sadly, that wasn’t even a funny comment, just very jackass-ish
Now what IS funny, is the banner ad on this page for “AfroRomance: Find Interracial Singles”
…too many comments to post….
Dude, ur answers keep cracking me up. Hilarious.
I was at the Wired conference in NYC and they might as well held up a confederate flag made out of red, white and blue USB cords.
I mean, all the non-black executives get VC money to burn, time to think of a good idea while blowing millions a year, sniff coke with VC money then play golf.
Black entrepreneurs have to work 80% more harder than their non-black competitors. I for one love it because of this I always have the best apps when I go to any of these smoozefests. If I was non-black, I would be a billionaire already. But since I will need to work extra harder to get there, it will just be that much more of a sting to the racist tech regime that think that they are not.
What I really love are the racist questions like “Well why are you the one with this technology?”, “Well what makes you think this will work?”, “Well I think your software made my battery drain faster.”, “I don’t believe you when you say it works”.
On that note I would like to send a shout out to:
Universal Music Group (Jim Urie and Paul Bishow how is business these days?)
Sony Music (Leslie Cohen and Adam Sosynski, how’s that digital initiative)?
Oh, and that Cocktail and CMX thing, there is some IP laying around covering that
This is a joke, right?
I hope this is a joke…
Well I am laughing.
I don’t know, try to look more nerdier. Besides, bootstrap your company. Most bankers and VC come from old money, meaning family connections and old european money. Its up to each individual and ethnic group to seek out untapped markets and exploit them.
I don’t know what is more disturbing, the switched head or the fact that the black/white guy seems to be using a white macbook with the apple logo photoshopped off.
I find more disturbing that they seem to be watching not a business presentation but a standup comedian obviously not telling racist jokes since both the black person and the pole are laughing.
And how is this racist? It was made to reflect the demographics better…
what an idiot, the whole idealism of an international corporation in marketing is to reflect how “internationally” widespread the company is… I don’t see how you could justify this stunt as “market preparation” they are selling technology here, and if their consumers have a problem with how reality is (AND REALITY IS African Americans do exist in the world), then those consumers should not be allowed to judge that corporation based on an advertisement.
and for the idiot who said the tech industry is full of white guys and computers … It was an African American who invented the first 1ghz processor ….not saying much but, look into ibm’s staff .. look into hp’s staff, then look into the worlds staff …
if someone has a problem purchasing an item because of the ethnicity of who “might” have taken part in the products existence, they should not be allowed to touch any other products.
good marketing or bad marketing, a company should show good moral values if they wish to stay in business, or at least give the consumers that hate them reason to not use other alternatives ( ubuntu … freebsd ) .. need I say more
Does anyone else sense parody’s coming…..?
http://microlove.ytmnd.com/
OK the whole office just turned to look at me @jasonkincaid . Speakers were turned way up! Now the whole office knows the Boss was goofing off.
Made of 100% WIN and fortified with AWESOME
Holy s**t that’s the funniest I have laughed in months.
wow. awesome.
I had to look that song up for some Nostalgia and saw that Bing sure is trying, haha:
http://tinypic.com/r/jazamu/3
I live in Qatar and this site (http://microlove.ytmnd.com/) is blocked !!!
hate censorship
http://homepage...potTheBusey.jpg
Too funny!
Cue the Polish Jokes…..
There is no story here, in fact i would honestly say if this picture were posted and the question asked “what is wrong with this picture.” the black hand would have made the cut and the monitor not being plugged in would have been called out, maybe the white laptop looks too Mac, but Calling the race card? Come on!
Someone who works in the industry may have called out the lighting on the white guys face.
I will even say if this were posted by ANY other Member of TechCrunch and not Michael Arrington, the flame here would be a white-hot.
I’m Polish and shame something like this happens and more that comes out of the company like MS.
Did no one else realize they also changed all of the words to gibberish
+1
awesome. some heads better roll at that agency!
Is it that much cheaper to photoshop (badly) then going to istockphoto or heaven forfend, just take a photo in your polish offices?
This is called localization. Nothing wrong with the use of it. But yeah, whoever did the Photoshop did a hatchet job.
“Localization” is when black guy is replaced with white guy.
Using Photoshop just to cut a black head and stick a white one (no changes with black hands and no attention to different light and shade of the white guy’s face) is called “cheap trick”.
Microsoft is known for photoshoping blacks, asians or whatever when they need to. I”ve seen a ad that they had something with a black girl changing her to white for the German market. It would make sense if they photoshoped all of them (Im from Poland and I see more blacks then asians).
So whose body is it? The white gai’s or the black gai’s?
neither – it’s actually the female’s body
Where can I get a Bing t-shirt like that. I work across street from Google office in Chicago, would love to walk by the place in it..
hilarious. can’t Microsoft afford to take real pictures with different racial make-ups if this is in fact a common practice? They could use bing to find them
“one black, one white, one asian”
“one white, one hispanic, one quadroon”
“one catholic, one jew, one buddhist”
lol.
Microsoft fixed it. The two websites both show the black dude now.
Oh dear- now, Microsoft will not sell any software in Poland because there’s a black guy on their website!!
I guess the fact that MS scurried to change the picture after this post appeared on TC just shows typical big company cover-your-ass behavior: behave amorally and unethically when you think you can get away with it, shit your pants in holy terror when you get exposd by the press, then hurry to change the situation to prevent PR fallout.
Just like Apple claiming they didn’t reject the Google Voice iPhone app. They’re all the same, these big corps. Congrats to TC (and the FCC) for keeping them honest.
I’d do her.
+1… screw the ads, who’s the milf?
Facts:
Blacks are virtually non-present in Poland, so they’re just adjusting for the local market. Anybody has a problem with that? Has anyone here even been to Poland to try this racist nonsense game?
Photoshop job is not great, but it’s not terrible, what’s a big deal?
At least it’s not another Twitter/Facebook post.
If you’re from Poland, you should remember Emmanuel Olisadebe.
From wikipedia: “Emmanuel Olisadebe is a Nigerian football (soccer) striker and a former player of the Polish national team…He played for the Polish national football team after becoming a citizen of Poland…In 2002, Olisadebe broke the record for the greatest number of goals scored by a Polish player in a single World Cup qualifying tournament (8)…”
The “big deal” here is that Microsoft team dropped the ball here, so to speak; I mean, if this is all about “adjusting for the local market” how hard is it for the guy responsible for designing this web page to find a photo of 3 white model/actors sitting in an office? As opposed to thinking, “Ok, let me just do a Photoshop job here, no one would ever notice.”
>>>> Facts: Blacks are virtually non-present in Poland
More Facts: Asians are virtually non-present in Poland TOO
Wrong
They sell cheep as stuff from china in most of cities
And have a lot of restaurants with Chinese food.
>>>> Anybody has a problem with that?
Yeh. You are right. Here in Poland we have much more problems with guys that have white face and black hands. You can meet them much more often in the streets of Warsaw than totally black people.
I think this is nothing but racism and racial hatred. I am so hurt!!! Why do they hate us? Why? Why?? Why???
I can’t stop crying. I’m balling right now!!!
Oh, somebody, give me a tissue !!!
Pre-Obama, I would have written something here that would have likely gotten me banned.
But I know that if the most powerful person in the world (our U.S. president for the slow starters) ever decided to visit Poland, I know they would appreciate and respect the positive influences black Americans have to offer.
As for Microsoft, I will remember this bullshit. I will remember this when you release that PayPal split-payments API in your Azure system, and I will make it my business to bring the subject of this ad up when it’s time to inform you that your infringing on some IP.
I assure you, this black person will exercise no mercy until you can show me a black senior executive to tell me otherwise.
Isn’t that racist? You will only listen to another person of the same skin color? Or is it okay to be racist if you are not white? Then what if you are a caramel color… can I also be a racist?
Jeff, you’re twisting his words. What William is saying is that he wants to see black senior executives in Microsoft as evidence that it is a post-racial company. And I have to agree- not just Microsoft, but the entire Fortune 500.
@Jeff, racism and other biases are not ok period.
A company as big as MS should have the personnel to physically show non bias just as a culture.
I hire and work with people of all races and personal preferences. Anyone ever pulling off such an offensive work action would be fired immediately.
just checked the polish site, it seems they changed it. both images are identical now
I was not aware that Microsoft photoshoped people like this, thanks for the heads up.
Oh I see what you did there.
It looks like that they heard you, both of the 2 sites have the black guy now!
I guess that should be the “Obama effect” ^0^
Interesting conversations here; I wish the world could actually grow up.
is this ok now: http://img.skit...ayq2482wtxt.jpg
Bing! http://www.tech...-a-bing-tshirt/
I think even the first photo of the black man in U.S./English version is photoshopped.. The size of his head is disproportionate to the rest of his body.. his shoulders and hand look quite small , just like the second picture where they have replaced the head:) maybe Microsoft guys have some board meeting photograph and playing merry-go-round with that:)
When I click on the polish version I get the picture with the black guy. Did they change it since?
yeah they changed it to the original.
OK, it’s almost endearingly clumsy and I understand the amoral marketing rationale about ‘local demographics’, but does that mean Microsoft would have removed jewish-looking people from ads in 1930s Germany to reflect ‘local demographics?’
What does that benign phrase actually mean – it means don’t put other ethnicities into ads because the audience don’t relate to that ethnicity (because it is not widely reflected in its population). But that itself is a reflection on race!
The very fact that someone said, ‘hmm, this doesn’t reflect the local demographic – lose the black guy’ shows that Microsoft is not colourblind and is making a commercial decision based on race. It’s being justified on the basis that it was not driven by malice. But such subtleties around the concept of ‘familiarity’ and ‘fit’ are used by homeowners who don’t sell their houses to black families.
In its absolute reduced form this action says ‘i think if there’s a black guy in this picture we are going to sell less of our product’.
That’s a bad thing, right?
+1
How hard would it have been to just get a different picture or simply take the picture and get some other guy to swap around. It’s not like any of them are fucking real anyway.
Also I can’t believe he’s using a Mac, that’s just too funny.
This is funney..black guyz are anywhere..hehe
This was likely the work of 20-something kid at a vendor tasked with localization of various Microsoft sites for that specific market, not a decision made by anyone at Microsoft.
Having been involved as a vendor for Microsoft with this exact type of work, I can say they have a VERY clear style guide, which you do not stray from, even if it might be a little out of sync with the local market. The policy is always when in doubt, stick to the style guide.
BBC has picked this up, and is now making it out to be a calculated decision on the part of Microsoft. In reality, this is probably more of an issue of poor vendor selection and oversight.
I can’t imagine that this was actually a decision made by anyone in Microsoft Poland’s internal marketing department, but probably a kid (likely now unemployed) working for a vendor (who just likely lost a client).
Anyway, it could be interesting for TechCrunch to follow up with Microsoft Poland to possibly add a bit more clarity to how this came about. This sort of insight could be useful for any company considering the challenges of localizing their communication efforts.
Jedi version : http://twitpic.com/fbddc
asian man only brought water, so he could stay!
this was like … “the blue screen of advertising”
that is hilarious! that is what happens when managers rush designers to get things done quick, without a final review. Not surprised by this from Microsoft at all.
Never gonna see your PowerPoint with the monitor unplugged.
http://twitpic.com/fbqmv
Never gonna see your PowerPoint with the monitor unplugged.
INCREDIBLE. The fact that this went to print blows my mind!
I love it how they managed to squeeze an asian, a black, and a white person into the original picture. This “we must represent every race” shit is going too far.
In other news, Microsoft fires Asian guy and hires Arrington: http://twitpic.com/fbu3u
…damn. It’s hard out here for a (minority) pimp.