“This is not what it looks like”

microsoftvirtual.jpg

citrixvirtual.jpg

Out of all the stock photographs of self-confident system administrators with their arms crossed standing unworried between rows of servers, what are the chances two competing products pick the same one. Well at least Citrix knows how to take care of her. How could Microsoft be so careless as to remove bits of her head and arm. You can tell by her smile she can’t get enough of this virtualization stuff.

51 insightful thoughts

  1. Hehe, good find ๐Ÿ™‚
    Maybe she isn’t just a stock model, but a real virtualization guru, who can handle both Citrix’s and Microsoft’s offerings ๐Ÿ˜‰

  2. Using the same model isn’t really too bad. But the fact that she only has one set of clothen, now that’s funny ๐Ÿ™‚

  3. I was reading the article and I noticed that EMC uses this exact same image as well on all of their training materials. I am training right now at EMC, she must be a popular stock image.

  4. @atin: they dont copy. They bought this picture very probably from an ads company and licensed to use it. And this ads company sells the same picture over and over.

  5. Haha, I guess she is an Apple user! ๐Ÿ˜‰ Reminds me of that story about an stock photo model for the Clinton campaign. She was working for Obama.

    Interesting that Microsoft manages to alway get the worst designers for their websites.

  6. ha ha ha, that is hilarious, and i cant believe they used such a generic pic as well…
    i agree completely with redfish though….and i find it makes their site less attractive, and just as generic as the pic!

    again with the bad marketing M$…

    peas
    cityboy

  7. Haha, good catch! I still think the MacBook in the Windows advert from a while back beats this, but this comes in a close second ๐Ÿ˜›

  8. I’m sure the model is happy. Microsoft used photoshop to shave off a few pounds and make her look skinnier,

  9. I’m sure she has do damn idea about Servers! Most of all, how did you spot this, three sites are using the same image ๐Ÿ™‚

  10. By the way Long, your site looks so good and it makes me visit your site and read the posts rather than reading it through Google Reader.

  11. Now that is a good catch.
    what’s next? Microsoft’s own MacBook Air certified for vista or mistakingly copying the default background from leopard and introducing it in the new windows7 !!!
    they should watch out for these tiny mistakes.

  12. “Atin – ho !! I canโ€™t believe, even Microsoft started copying from others”

    I don’t think they’ve started man, they’re only continuing to do what they do best.

  13. Doesn’t Gates own one of the largest stock photo companies in the world? I wonder if she is from that company.

  14. @Michael
    Scary how she appears (quite horribly) in the Dell page as well!
    She’s one confident stock image that’s for sure ๐Ÿ˜‰

  15. It never ceases to amaze me just how pathetic the majority of the denizens of the internet can be. Two websites happen to choose the same stock photo, one of them happens to be a Microsoft site so obviously it’s Microsoft being lazy, stupid, evil or just plain dumb.

    Think about it for a second, noobs – do we even know which site was published first? Do you really think Microsof’ts designers would be dumb enough to deliberately copy images from the home page of a well-known company that competes in the field they’re creating the page for? It’s most likely, that, evidenced by the fact that Dell have used the same image for a server-related site of theirs, that it’s just a very popular and attractive photo.

    Oh, and to those who still think that putting a dollar sign into Microsoft’s name is funny (well in this case, just dj_cityboy), I say this: the 90’s are long gone. Deal with it.

  16. @Jono Hear hear! Dollar signs and purposeful mispellings (i.e. Windoze) are so stupid… its like a flag that says “I am a retard. Nothing you say can change my biased and crowd based opinion.”

  17. It’s amazing to see how many people reading this page seem to be talking with little or no knowledge as to what they are talking about.

    1) the image is from a stock CD… more info here: http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?contractUrl=1&language=en-US&family=creative&lic=rf&cdonly=true&p=200022154-001&src=standard

    2) all photography is copyright unless the photographer was stupid enough to had it over to their client or the stock agency

    3) microsoft would rely on stock photos for these sort of add because it’s cheaper than setting up a photo shoot and negotiating a usage license with a photographer

    4) most likely the image was chosen by a poor graphics drone (from McCann, Microsoft’s ad agency) who didn’t know any better… I can already hear the conversation:

    Art Director: “Dude just use a cheap stock photo from one of those Royalty Free discs we have kicking about… you know something with a couple of dudes and chick in a skirt…”

    Graphics Drone: “why don’t we get a photographer to shoot a photo”

    Art Director: “Nah, the client won’t know any better and this way we get a tone of money without much input”.

    Seen this a million times over in other companies.

    5) Bill Gates is only share holder in Corbis…. you don’t really expect to be able to walk into the next Harvey Norman and get a free copy of Windows Vista only because you might have some shares in Microsoft?

    The bottom line is this sort of thing is nothing out of the ordinary and happens all the time. As a matter of fact I recently saw a major campaign for FootLocker using a Royalty Free image… I only knew because I had used the same image 6 months earlier for client for an Intranet project… bummer should have charged my client more money. The funny thing was that FootLocker’s agency didn’t even bother changing the image. The simply copped it a little to fit the add format, plastered a tag line in white Helvetica over the top, a logo in the corner and sent the lot their printers. Now that’s what I call ripping off your client.

    In the end this is the result of big corporates dictating to their entire company that they have to use a specific agency. The agency then gets a lump sum per year do all marketing work. Each department then usually approaches the agency with specific requirements for individual campaigns. The crazy thing is that most agency get a fixed rate per year regardless of the amount of work they do… so in nutshell the agency will try to save money as much as they can.

    There are some notable companies that handle their agencies slightly different… Apple being one of them. That’s why you generally won’t see too much tacky stock photography on Apple’s web site.

  18. These are not the only ads I have seen her in. She is web ads, magazine ads and even on TV, sometimes its with the two guys behind her or just her alone.

  19. I guess the real questions is why add the girl in first place?

    I can already head another discussion:

    Client: “Yeah that’s nice but we need to make it more about people.”

    Art Director: “But I think anyone getting this far already know they want a virtual server. The only thing they want to know now is what it can do. No photographs of people needed to communicate that.”

    Client: “Yeah but I want to have some people in there somewhere.”

    Art Director: “We’ll see what we can do.”

    Art Director to Graphics Drone: “Can you ad a photo of someone not too nerdy looking into the banner.”

    Graphics Drone does a quick and dirty cut and paste job using a stock image he/ she already used 100 times in previous work.

    Art Director to client: “We have added a person.”

    Client: “Thanks… haven’t had a chance yet to look at it but I am sure it will be alright.”

    As I said before… this sort of thing happens 100% over on a daily basis in large advertising agencies…

    … As Stefan Sagmeister once said “any design studio with more than 4 people mostly produces crap”. … I only second that.

Comments are closed.