Archive for December, 2009
December 8th, 2009
The news:
The Polish city of Sosnowiec launched a campaign to encourage tourists from the French cities of Roubaix and Les Meraux, and Morocco’s Casablanca to visit the city. The campaign ran both on and offline and featured two young, attractive models seen to be gesturing in a positive way. The gestures, unlike in Poland where they have positive connotations, are highly offensive and can be considered sexually abusive in the Mediterranean and some Arab countries.
December 1st, 2009
The news:
A company photo published on Microsoft’s website recently caused a scandal after it appears that the company had followed inappropriate cultural advice. On the company’s US website the photograph depicts a scene of an Asian man, black man and white woman of various ages seated around a table. This was supposed to show equality within the company in regard to race and age. For the firm’s Polish website, the image is “photo-shopped”, with a white man’s head placed on the black man’s body. This spurred outrage with bloggers and tweeters around the world. The image was hurriedly removed and Microsoft issued an official apology although they gave no explanation of why the image was edited.