Microsoft Poland whitens a black face in its advert

Are you telling me that corporation such as Microsoft puts profit ahead of PC movement? Well there's a surprise for you. So whose fault is this ?, even if such decision was made by a Pole. What you are really saying here is that it's not racism that paid a part in decision making but corporate greed.

Microsoft is a racist company.Blacks should buy Macs.

This is what my friend from the marketing HQ told me. I can't tell you anything else. But as you could've read, it's a bit of both. Racism in order to make money, so to say.


Against who?

M-G (a mac is a mac of course)

Big Mac's?

Well then your friend is wrong and a racist himself. Since Polish costumers never had a chance to respond to this ad, it's solely Microsoft opinion that depicting black gentleman in it's ad is offensive to Polish society in general and what potentially Polish client might or might not find offensive in this ad. Even if this view was to be true it was still the opinion of Microsoft executive that ultimately was responsible for this decision. Therefore in order to increase the sales or keep them at the current level it was Microsoft's opinion that a white person should be used in one of it's ad's. As to not finishing the job I guess there must have been some budget cuts so only the face got replaced. So Microsoft's generalization (which also can be viewed as form of racist in itself or at the very least a bias opinion) of Poles and the potential of profit was the motivating factor in making this decision.

Polish consumer did not had a chance to respond to Microsoft's new and improved ad since it was scraped as soon as it seen the light of day, making this so called racist issue still just an opinion of Microsoft. Now in order to show that such behaviour will not be tolerated by such a respectable and modern corporation as Microsoft, they should fire the person responsible, take responsibility for their employee who made this decision on behalf of Microsoft. After all not only that it reflects badly on the Microsoft's image as a whole, it is really an opinion and bias of one of their own influential employees in a leadership position that made this unfortunate decision in order to benefit Microsoft by maximizing potential profit and not to not to offend Polish costumer as you claimed. Taking the responsibility for what has occurred would generate to much negative opinion of Microsoft or perhaps even a lawsuit or two so this will never happen, instead they are passing a buck on to the Poles who never even had a chance to vote with their wallets to see if Microsoft's theory of them being offended holds water.

I am 100% sure he is not wrong. You think you know it better than somebody who is a staffmember of the responsible department?

M-G (but it doesn't matter - I told how it went down and if it doesn't suit, tough luck then)

No you spread rumours. You've never been a witness to this neither was your friend.

I am not even gonna react to this.

M-G (tsk)

If you arrived in Poland for the first time and walked around Galeria Krakowska or similar places in other Polish cities you'd think from the images and adverts of people in the clothes, shoe, spectacle shops etc that you were in a truly multicultural society. But step outside this artificial environment and try to spot such ethnic diversity; if you do it's probably some guys from Blighty on a lads' weekend. I don't think it's morally worse or more insensitive to delete a black guy from a picture for reasons of marketing strategy or whatever you want to call it than to create the idea of a phoney United Colours of Benetton type world which doesn't, as far as I can see, exist in Poland....

They do the same here in England. Despite what you see on TV there are still many parts of England which contain only white english people, my family live in Brightlingsea, black people and immigrants are unheard of there.

In the post office they have changed the pictures to show only white people, however in London where I live the post office has pictures with asians and blacks.

The reason they do it is to target marketing towards the correct local demographics, in multicultural parts of England companies tend to abide by diversity recommendations however in English only parts you will often see imagery of English locals as opposed to ethnic minorities.

I've even seen Polish parts of England which contains Polish people shown in advertising. If you are offended by this then chances are you don't really understand the concept of multiculturalism.