Microsoft is in hot water because of its retouching of a
print ad for two different markets.
Microsoft used this ad with the black guy for its domestic marketing
campaign and then decided to reuse the same ad sans black guy in Poland. If you look closely at the second
image, you’ll notice his hand is still the same. I guess Microsoft didn’t think the image of the black guy
would resonate with their target market.
Is this a big deal? No, not really. Marketers develop creative to resonate with different audiences all the time. Ah, maybe that’s The Reason people are upset… Microsoft used the exact same creative and just switched out faces. That’s racial insensitivity. There are two questions that need to be answered in this type of situation: (1) if a creative resonates across different audiences, is there really a need to change faces used in each market? (2) If there’s a substantive Reason to use different faces for different markets, doesn’t that imply there may be a need to develop substantively different creative?
[Update via twitter: Microsoft has re-inserted the black guy into the ad]
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