Now You See Him, Now …
The edit of the Microsoft ad for its Polish division was crude. The U.S. ad depicted three people at a conference table: an Asian man, a black man, and a white woman. When localizing the marketing image for Poland, Microsoft replaced the black man's with that of a white man.
The photos are basically identical (as pictured above). However, in the picture, only the black man's head was replaced — the hands noticeably a different color.
Originally many thought this was originally a joke, but Microsoft's public apology set the record straight. Microsoft told Cnet “You know, we don't see race at Microsoft. It's really a shame that in this day and age, so many people still do. For our Polish web page, we just thought we'd go another way, a more European way.
“It's really a question of marketing. I'm sure if we ever decided to sell software in Africa, we'd bring the black guy back for those pages, and, probably, photoshop out the woman for one more in line with African beauty ideals, like, say, a blonde.”
It's really getting hard for a brother to hold a job in this economy.
posted by Biff Loman at 7:00 PM
2 Comments:
The outrage in America is just ridiculous.
In advertising, it's just everyday business to match the "ethnic landscape" of the target country.
How can anybody find this strange??
It isn't strange. Marketing and Americans go together like charlatans and suckers. We're entirely familiar with the concept of target demographics, and we totally dig it. That's not what the outrage is about.
As I said, we understand targeting particular demographics. For instance, McDonald's has its own website for black people. No one's outraged. It's cool.
What Microsoft did, on the other hand, is insulting to African Americans and the commitment to diversity that most multinational corporations support, including Microsoft, if its website is to be believed.
*begin quote*
Microsoft strives to understand, value, and incorporate the differences each employee brings to the company so that we can build the greatest multicultural workplace in the technology industry and reflect the growing diversity and inclusion of our communities and the global marketplace.
* end quote*
In fact, one of the pillars of their diversity strategy is “creating a culture and climate of respect and inclusion.” You don't do that by poorly photoshopping the black guy off of your website.
If the Polish market is important to you and your research shows that Poles won't buy software from you if your webpage includes a black man (I have no idea if that's true) — even if you are the world leader in operating system and work suite software — then you spend the few thousands euros to get a site-specific photograph for your Polish webpage. Better yet, you leave it alone and use your market share to bring diversity into the Polish business community.
Instead, Microsoft undermined its position with its employees and its business partners worldwide, which is what I find strange. The Internet collapses time and space. Access to information is immediate, and geographic distance is such that everywhere is here. There is no advertising that you can post that will not be viewed immediately and evaluated by everyone, target populations and lookers-on, alike. Whomever photoshopped this picture seemed to be thinking old media, like they were changing a local billboard. Is that really how Microsoft wants to be perceived.
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