Microsoft changes ad to remove African American

It’s really hard to remain politically correct and still be effective in advertising these days. Nowhere is this more evident than in an ad that was shown worldwide, yet modified for use in Poland. The change was not subtle.

In the old days, when you wanted to make a photo more palatable for an Eastern European state, you just airbrushed it, and no one complained (out loud).

Now it’s easier than ever to alter an image. But it’s harder to get away with it.

Ask Microsoft, who just got caught digitally erasing a black man from a promotional photo and replacing him with a white guy. The original photo ran on a U.S. version of a Microsoft promotional site; the (clumsily) retouched version ended up on a Polish version.

In a photo on its U.S. Web site, an apparent stock photograph features three businesspeople–one white, one black, and one Asian. Microsoft’s Polish subsidiary uses the same photo–except a white head is superimposed in place of the black person’s head that appears on the U.S. site. The hand in both photos is the same.

Although Microsoft would be within reason to use a different photo on its Polish site–the country is very racially homogeneous–the company is coming under significant criticism for simply photoshopping a head onto someone else’s body.

Polish Site

American Site

“In this day and age, this is shocking,” wrote Twitter user Barry McCauley. “Unacceptable.”

Microsoft (MSFT) has since replaced the Polish photo with the original, and apologized last night.

[cb type=”company”]Microsoft[/cb]