Oooops!
3 Sep, 09 | by Iain Brassington
You may have heard last week about the Microsoft advert running in Poland that had been… um… how can I put it?… ethnically re-envisioned (and badly, too: even I could Photoshop an image more convincingly, and I’m like a blind monkey with scissors). And Ford got into trouble a few years ago for doing something similar.
Well, it would seem that Lublin Medical School - or, at least, its web designers - has been doing the same thing, doctoring (geddit?) the ethnic makeup of its publicity bumf according to the audience. (The link goes to Photoshop Disasters rather than the university itself, because something tells me that, even if the original page is still up as I’m writing this, it won’t be for long.)
I can see the defence here: advertising is about appealing to people, and different parts of the world will respond to appeals differently, demographics, culture, blah-di-blah-di-blah. But - really - do you have to be so obvious in your tampering? Y’know: at least make the buttons to switch from the Polish to English versions a bit harder to find or something…
*facepalms*
You are great!The article is great.
[MOD EDIT: Yeah - all the rest was adverts and spam. Have some of this instead.]
yly
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:45 am
I love it that the response appears to be to take the black guy out of the English language version rather than put him into the Polish language version!
http://www.umlub.pl/index2.html
Nathan
Nathan
September 5th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
I’d assumed it was the other way around, actually: that the original was all white (Poland, let’s face it, not being known for its black population) and then someone though, “Wait! English speakers might see this!”, had a bit of a tokenism sneeze.
Either way: blindingly obvious and a bit silly.
UPDATE: Ahh… I see what you mean. Actually, I think that this is the right thing to have done on this occasion. Like I said: it’s Poland. The absence of non-white faces really isn’t any big deal as far as I can see. (I think PsD got it wrong: the English version of the site was embarrassing just because it was all racially hung-up.)
Iain Brassington
September 5th, 2009 at 10:55 pm