Alicia Keys and BlackBerry? Why celebrities answer the call of tech companies

Lady Gaga and Will.i.am have also snaffled 'creative director' jobs for hi-tech corporations. What's the appeal of these gigs – are they anything more than a photo op?

Thorsten Heins, CEO of RIM, introduces Alicia Keys as the global creative director of BlackBerry. Yes. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

Most companies would struggle when faced with a rapidly declining market share, but not BlackBerry. It may be losing customers to Apple and Samsung all over the place, but it knows exactly how to reel them all back in – by unveiling Alicia Keys as its new creative director.

It's a genius move. Nobody understands BlackBerries like Alicia Keys does. In retrospect, it's clear that most of her songs were really about smartphones all along, If I Ain't Got You was about the time she lost her BlackBerry and had to temporarily make do with a substandard Nokia, for example, and Girl On Fire was about the time she made the regrettable decision to buy a Kindle tablet instead of a BlackBerry Playbook. Surely Alicia Keys will lead BlackBerry into a brave new future; a future where all the ringtones sound like generic R&B and Alicia Keyshas to be careful not to let anyone photograph her using an iPhone.

 

Will.i.am in his role as Intel's director of creative innovation. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

But BlackBerry isn't the first tech company to draft in a celebrity to beef up its credibility. Three years ago, Lady Gaga was named as the creative director of Polaroid. She even designed a printer for the company. Admittedly it couldn't have looked any more generic if it tried, and people only buy Polaroids ironically now, but it's the thought that counts. Two years ago, Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas was named as the director of creative innovation at Intel; a move that suggested a horrible future where one day he'd mumble disinterestedly over a loop of the company's jingle for three minutes and release it as another godawful single.

Jessica Alba introduces another important Windows 8 announcement to a room of spellbound tech journos. Photograph: Stephen Lam/Getty Images

Similarly, Microsoft drafted Jessica Alba in to launch Windows 8 last year. This was a step down from what the norm – she wasn't made a creative director of anything, not even of the box that Windows 8 phones came in – but on the plus side she gave the photographers something other than banks of worried-looking tech journalists to take pictures of.

Now we just have to wait and see whether Alicia Keys can live up to her creative-directing peers. If she can, who knows, that double concept R&B album about the annoying flashing red light in the corner of her BlackBerry might finally become a reality.

It's obvious that this sort of arrangement has a mutual benefit - the companies know that kids will react more strongly to, say, Lady Gaga than a balding divisional conglomerate head, and the celebrities can flatter themselves to think that they're anything other than a last-ditch attempt to save a firm from bankruptcy. It's a win-win for everybody, especially people who enjoy watching Alicia Keys hold a telephone that she doesn't really seem to care about very much.

Alicia Keys laments 'heartless' justice system in reform pitch to Congress

‘We can no longer afford to be this cruel to our young’ singer-songwriter tells congressional staffers at event with Senator Cory Booker and activist Van Jones

Keys said of the US criminal justice system: ‘People are not assumed to be innocent, they’re assumed to be guilty.’ Photograph: Jackie Brown/Splash News/Corbis

From time to time, celebrities visit Washington to join advocates in favor of a cause – often raising the profile of an issue by giving extra weight to an otherwise routine press conference or committee hearing.

On Monday, the singer-songwriter Alicia Keys chose a decidedly low-key way to do this, delivering an impassioned plea to staffers on Capitol Hill, where Congress is weighing landmark legislation to reform the criminal justice system.

Keys spoke not as the recipient of multiple Grammy awards, nor as an international superstar of more than a decade. She addressed the crowd as a mother.

Keys had just arrived from Baltimore, where protests were sparked earlier this year after Freddie Gray, an unarmed 25-year-old black man, died in police custody. Keys had spent hours on Monday meeting the families of those who had been incarcerated, in some cases parents who saw their children tried as adults at ages as young as 15.

“Nowhere in the rest of the western world are juveniles being tried as adults, or even worse, sentenced to life sentences without parole,” she said. “Is this who we are now? Is this who we want to be?

“These are just regular boys and girls, trying to find their way.”

Joining Keys were Senator Cory Booker, one of the leading proponents of criminal justice reform, and civil rights activist Van Jones. Booker, from New Jersey, is a member of a bipartisan Senate group that in September reached a compromise that aims to lower mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders and reform a justice system that disproportionately impacts minorities, particularly African Americans.

In an interview with the Guardian after the event, Keys underscored the urgency of the moment following a year marked by national demonstrations over race relations and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“We need to take that momentum and utilize it,” she said. “We’re losing lives, stopping lives.”

Reflecting on her meetings in Baltimore, she said she had been struck by the different trajectories among the youth she encountered.

One young man had been given the opportunity to go to a high school that propelled and supported him, turned around his grades and helped him become the first member of his family to go to college. One girl had gone to prison when she was 14.

“It’s the opportunity or the lack of that makes all the difference in the world,” she said. “It really has the potential to change everything.”

Last year, Keys launched the We Are Here movement, to push for social justice on a wide range of national and international issues including racial inequity in the US. She has also supported Cut50, an organization co-founded by Jones that seeks to reduce the prison population by 50% over the next 10 years.

On Capitol Hill, Keys urged attendees to sign an online petition that would be delivered to the White House once it reached 1m signatures.

Criminal justice reform was “extremely urgent”, she told the Guardian, pointing to a limited window of time to mount pressure on lawmakers. Asked how escalating tensions between police officers and minorities factored into her message, she said it was no surprise that communities of color lacked trust in law enforcement.

“One of the most important things that I saw [in Baltimore] was people are guilty before they’re even proven innocent,” Keys said. “They’re not assumed to be innocent, they’re assumed to be guilty.

“Who would have trust when you’re attacked, and when you’re not given the opportunity to express yourself? When you’re just automatically judged that you’re there doing something wrong, whether you are or not.”

She expressed a similar message in her formal remarks, emphasizing the need to show more compassion toward minority youth.

Every teenager makes mistakes, Keys pointed out. She certainly did, she said, as had everyone gathered in the room when they were teenagers. Keys recounted stories she had heard of those who grew up in environments in which one mistake could change an entire life.

“Fourteen years old and tried as an adult. Sixteen years old and tried as an adult,” she said. “We can no longer afford to be this cruel to our young ... It’s heartless.”

The criminal justice bill in the Senate, which cleared a committee vote last month, will not resolve every problem. But it would be the most significant federal action in decades. It also has the backing of the White House, where Barack Obama has made criminal justice reform a pillar of his second-term agenda.

Booker said Keys and others like her could play a “very powerful role” in helping to bolster the message, drawing on the involvement of artists like Harry Belafonte and Dick Gregory in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Booker told the Guardian the proposed criminal justice reforms would save billions in taxpayer dollars, lower crime and, more importantly, elevate potential in communities most deeply impacted by tough-on-crime laws.

“We are conducting our criminal justice system in a way that is incredibly expensive, it’s not making us more safe, and it’s just destroying human potential,” Booker said.

Booker said he was pleased by the rare consensus across both parties in favor of reforming the system, but cautioned against complacency.

“This will be a long road. It’s going to be an every single day effort,” he said. “And we’ve got to keep the pressure on.”