Big fun in little Poland

[Purkake]

So apparently Microsoft photoshopped a black dude into a white dude in their Polish ad:

 

 

Any insight into this, Polish people?

[Pidesco]

That has to be fake. The head is in a completely unnatural position and his hand is still black.

 

 

Now, that said, if this was true it would make sense if there aren't any black people in Poland. It would be weird to have what's supposed to be the picture of a Polish office filled with people who are clearly not Polish. I mean, imagine if it was say, a Korean ad and none of the people in the ad looked remotely Korean.

[Purkake]

It's not fake, look at the links in the Engadget article.

 

Sure, I can understand why they would do it, but it is still hilariously stupid.

[Pidesco]

Ok, this is actually brilliantly incompetent.

[Purkake]

If it makes the rounds on the web, it will also be a PR disaster. "Microsoft hates black people"

Edited August 25, 2009 by Purkake

[Enoch]

Oof. That's a good way for a marketing firm to lose one of its biggest accounts...

 

 

Big companies like MS don't produce ad copy in-house. But they do occasionally take the blowback when one of the ads turns out to be embarrassing! (In fact, the blame probably lies with whatever little sub-department (or subcontractor) of the ad agency does the translation and localization.)

[Hurlshort]

That's silly.

 

But it's not racist at all. They hired the black guy and used him for the bigger market. It'd be worse if they photoshopped in the black guy to sell to inner city areas or something.

[Humodour]

LOL they have changed it back to the original. http://www.microsoft.com/poland/businesspr...ty/default.mspx

[Walsingham]

I just remember that time I went to a client's dinner and one of their black employees was hammering on and ON about how Polish people are emigrating to the UK and taking all our jobs. Her father was Jamaican, and the waiters were clearly Polish, but she didn't seem to get it. Chariutably I put this down to her general stupidity since she was clearly anorexic into the bargain, and we apoligised to the waiting staff and then I took the piss out of her.

[Guest PoziomyPion]

We dont have lots of blacks here, but they are here. There are more Koreans,Chinese and Vietnamese people, but the biggest group would be Gypsies.

 

Just for example, I live in a city that isn't really your perfect vacation spot, although it is not bad here, it's just the high unemployment rate that drags everything down.

 

Anyway, I am living all my life in the same building as a family of Gypsies(LOTS of them) and went to school with them, then there were the occassional students from Africa and some African families actually moved nearby(OMIGOSH) and Asians(from Vietnam,China etc) who are mainly working in trade.

They just opened two Chinese Trade Centre's where all of the staff was Chinese, until they started making lots of many and just hired dirty Poles to do their work.

 

Now when I went to Britain to take someone's job (it's just no local person wanted to work as a caretaker in a dementia/alzheimer carehome.)

I have never seen such diversity . I don't mean London(duh) but a city as big(small?) as my hometown.

 

No Brit believed me, they tought I'm taking a piss or something

Edited August 26, 2009 by PoziomyPion

[Morgoth]

Looks clearly fake. Black hands, the short neck....come on MS, you gotta hire better (and less racist) artists.

Edited August 26, 2009 by Morgoth

[Guest PoziomyPion]

Notice they left the Asian dude.

 

A white racist would photoshop the Asian man too, right?

 

It's either some Asian racist who did that, or a black person taking a piss.

[Gorgon]

Wow that's a really bad photoshop job.

[Nihilus5078]

Well, one thing, Poland isn't that small.

[Purkake]

The title was more of a bad joke.

 

I'm not really calling anyone racist. Someone just screwed up really bad in Microsoft. Why couldn't they get another piece of clip art with more appropriate people? Going out of your way to make the black guy white is really weird.

 

I'm sure the Polish people wouldn't have noticed/cared about the black guy.

 

At least there will always be funny photoshops:

 

Edited August 26, 2009 by Purkake

[Guest PoziomyPion]

HAHAH that would work better!

 

 

PS. I was wachting a news channel and they just mentioned this . Microsoft PR guy said he's sorry etc.

Now that media are taking piss out of Microsoft(after the news channel aired the information about that bad photoshop thing the journalist said: "And my hand is still white !) I don't wanna be in this PR guy shoes.

[Purkake]

Yup, I saw it too.

 

Microsoft has apologized for changing the race of a person posing in a marketing photo.

 

CNet yesterday reported that Microsoft had edited what appeared to be a stock photo of three business people for its Polish site. While the original, untouched version appears on the US website and shows an Asian man, a white woman and a black man; an edited version of the same photo appears on the Polish website and shows a white man's head on the black man's body. The black hand resting on the table remains unchanged.

 

When asked for comment, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNet that the company was looking into details of the situation and apologized, adding that the image had been pulled from the Polish site.

[Blarghagh]

What bothers me isn't the fact they changed a black man into a white man, what bothers me is that they took a guy looking interested and pleasant with such a jerkface.

[Walsingham]

What they should have done is said they simply realised that the original guy looked really weird. They hadn't considered anyone would think it was because he was black.

[Humodour]

Yeah the black guy looks freaky.