Intel Names will.i.am As Executive

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At CES this year, we saw Polaroid unveil singer Lady Gaga has their “Creative Director” as they unveiled some Lady Gaga-inspried products. Now, Intel is playing the same card, I guess. They’ve signed hip hop artist and Black Eyed Peas man will.i.am to be their “Director of Creative Innovation”. Intel is, of course, the largest semiconductor chip maker in the world. So why the heck did Intel hire will.i.am?

Details are pretty vague on what will.i.am will be doing at Intel. The press release says that it is a “unique role” and that that will.i.am will be working with Intel on  ”many creative and technology endeavors across the “compute continuum” that may include such devices as laptops, smart phones and tablets”. Oh yeah, he’s also working on music exclusively for Intel. A cynical part of me thinks that Intel wanted to hire will.i.am to make some music for a commercial and it got expanded into this great big deal that gets will.i.am a flashy job title at Intel.

Tech news world isn’t exactly thrilled with the news. Most blog reports I’ve seen on the topic are wondering “Why?” while PC Magazine’s editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff wrote a column criticzing the move. Ulanoff points out, last year, we saw Intel commercials featuring famous Intel engineers as “rock stars” (remember the one with USB inventor Ajay Bhatt?). Now, it seems that Intel is moving from highlighting real engineers (even though Bhatt was portrayed as an actor in that commercial) to highlighting the same old celebrities that we see promoting everything else. Brian Barrett at Gizmodo wrote that it makes sense for Polaroid to hire Lady Gaga, since Polaroid markets consumer products. Outside of computer tech people, I doubt many people who what Intel is or care if their $400 Dell laptop from Best Buy is running an Intel or AMD chip.

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