Microsoft Apologizes For Photoshop Blunder

Smooth move exlax! But at least they fessed up and apoligized for their actions.

oh...and the woman in the picture was originally a man.

So the white American male is officially gone from American adds.

whats the big deal if Poland doesn't have an ethnic african population?

Other than the humorous photoshop mistake (forgetting about the hand). I don't think this is an issue. They're just targeting the local population. If they'd swapped out the other guy or the woman, this likely wouldn't have been newsworthy at all.

Any excuse to play the race card I guess. Shame.

I hope this wasn't some sort of weird joke rather than a bad mistake demonstrating a lack of attention to detail.

For something like a website image, I would think MS would just do it correctly. I'm sure they have a relationship with a stock photographer if they don't have one on staff already anyway. Just have him create a basic image like this and have several different types of people. Oh well. They got caught, but it is just a marketing strategy, not racism.

my question is why and how are people deriving any information about the product being sold by the color of the skin of the people in a photo? do people in poland not do any business with those outside of poland?

Apology accepted, but still stupid, they should have known better. Stupid advertising people.

From the slashdot discussion on this, apparently in most parts of the world outside the US, an advertisement showing that level of ethnic diversity just screams "American."

This would imply that the company is obviously not local, and isn't interested in altering their products to fit with local customs.

I wonder if they took out the Asian guy for the South African version.

and the "they're just trying to meet their local demographic" argument is racist in itself... are you trying to say that they have asians but not blacks? that it's somehow more acceptable to have lighter skinned elasticities?

haha... wth.. elasticities... damn you spell check!

it could have only happened in poland. Im telling you

Perhaps the polish one is the original, if they had replaced the white man with a black man for the American ad would people still be angry?

This is a non-issue, it is being blown out of proportion to serve an agenda, by people who probably don't produce anything of value; they have to create issues so they can look and feel important.

Maybe I'm a horrible person for this, but instead of the racial implications I can't stop thinking about what an awful photo edit microsoft did. Hell the lighting isn't even right.

there is almost no black in poland beside the one who is turist, yes there are asian there, i am an asian and i lived and been in poland, my wife is a pure polish so i know this well, polish people are known to be judgmental but seriously this is marketing for locale, so whats the big problem crop out the black guy to make it more relate able?

might as well ask microsoft why asian microsoft ads on tv has no black in there and no whites? b/c it is for the freaking country, geeze not everyone is so sensitive all of suddent

They should have taken a different picture altogether for Poland (or any country), instead of photoshoping the image. Shame on M$.

That's pretty funny. Foolish Microsoft, photoshop fail. I just hope they don't get more fines for racism, it wasn't done for racism, it was done for demographics.

Hah.

Microsoft would not have engaged in this sort of bigoted nonsense in the Windows ME days that's for sure. God I miss that OS! The best one they've put out so far.

it's about three PEOPLE in a photo for a commercial...Why does it even matter what race were they? Gee, try to see beyond the surface and the skin...I didn't even get the whole thing until I read the rest of the article...to me it was just three humans around a table...

Microsoft can do no evil! Shame on everyone for pointing out Microsoft's follies! What did they do to you?

(*whispers quietly in a soothing voice to Microsoft: 'It's alright there Microsoft, they didn't mean it, they are just jelous, shh it's okay, let it out" *)

In marketing there is a fine line in these kinds of decisions but in this case I think that they should have opted for a different photo altogether rather than photoshop that one. Or they could have left it alone, would anyone have cared or noticed then?

I honestly hate how they do this anyways. Putting mixed races in advertisements just to try to appeal to all races is a form of racism itself. If you think that you must have a member of the race in the ad to appeal to that race then your clearly calling that entire race racist. Which oddly enough is racism itself and completely false.

Can anyone here honestly say they would refuse to use a service or buy a product because its advertisements didn't contain a member of your race?

This is a very common practice and is actually good business sense. No matter who you are, what you see has more impact on you than any of your other senses. When asked, "if you could only keep one of your senses, which one would you choose?" most people would keep their sight. Marketing people know this.

I am African-american and I must say that the only crime done here is poor QA.