Intel is taking a page from Polaroid’s playbook: Grab a hot musician, give them an official sounding title and hope the PR blitz surrounding that will result in something good. 
With the camera company having already snapped up Lady Gaga, the chip maker went with Black Eyed Peas front man will.i.am. His title: Director of Creative Innovation. His duties: No one seems to have any freaking idea.
The company says the agreement is “a multi-year, hands-on creative and technology collaboration” which will see the musican “collaborate and co-develop new ways to communicate, create, inform and entertain”.
A press conference with will.i.am and Intel’s chief marketing officer Deborah Conrad was a rambling half hour that avoided hard answers and incorporated talk of the singer’s shoes, his new Intel ID badge and some of the strangest apropos of nothing comments to be heard in an Intel call.
“I’m not a race car driver, but the content I create races around the internet. It’s racing through you right now,” said will.i.am in describing how he began working with Intel.
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While his role beyond brand ambassador is still unclear, it was hinted he might tinker with the company’s long standing jingle. And, judging by some of his comments, he might even be helping out the futurists at the company.
“Why do I have to use a microphone nowadays?,” he asked rhetorically. “Just because that’s what they did yesterday? Why can’t you use a smartphone and upload your performance?”
