Microsoft Ad Department **FAIL**
 

Who gave this guy the keys to the Photoshop software?:bustingup

Doing business abroad sometimes requires companies to tweak their marketing strategies. Companies often swap idiomatic phrases or images in advertisements to better suit cultural sensitivities and achieve better sales. But do those edits ever go too far?

A black man was replaced with a white man in a Microsoft online advertisement intended for use in Poland. An Asian man in the ad apparently made the cut, and appeared in both the Polish and stateside versions of the ad.

But the ad's creator(s) missed one small detail.

Microsoft's U.S. version of the ad:
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen...7/original.jpg


Microsoft's Polish version of the ad:
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen...8/original.jpg

The Asian guy miraculously survived, but only a small portion of the black guy remains. They forgot to Photoshop out his hand.:thud:

Microsoft has since apologized, according to CNET

Hmmmmm. Just curious, what cultural sensitivities
does poland have?

They don't like older men.:rofl:

Ridiculous. :rolleyes:

Doubt this is the first company to do it.

I have never been to Poland, and don't know what percentage of Polish office workers are black. Would the black man look out of place in a Polish office? If so, I can see changing the pic to look more like what the intended audience expects to see.

Maybe that was their reason, but God forbid they show a black guy in a professional environment in Poland.

Lets put aside the fact that Microsoft did it. They did a half assed job and failed to photoshop out the black dude's hand. Talk about a serious case of vitiligo.

But that is exactly my point. Maybe there are no black male professionals in Poland. It is a mistake to assume that our cultural norms are worldwide, isn't it? If this was an ad meant for Japan, don't you think it would be more appropriate that all the people in it were Japanese? :stickpoke

Well, you can't expect the world's largest software company to be able to afford good advertising folks. ;)

They should have used a Mac :)

Oh, you're all wrong. It wasn't a photoshop -- it was head transplant :rolleyes:

Wagner, Assuming it was a photochop, a Mac was probably used... :stickpoke

And Microsoft have fixed the Polish ad now :D