Why Intel’s 2021 Computex Keynote Feels Like Gibberish

Intel’s keynote feels like it’s utterly and totally weighed down by gibberish, with bizarre filmography, strange hand movements, amateurish production values, and a general lack of meaningful information. They basically use 40 minutes of market-speak buzzwords without actually saying a blasted thing.

Steve over at Gamers Nexus does a good job of pointing out how ridiculous and absurd it is, where it’s clear Intel forget they had products to talk about, and in fact were supposed to be there to discuss products.

But why is it this way? What could possibly cause such an obvious flub? Well, I work in web development as a freelance accessibility and efficiency consultant, and I deal with this type of stupidity all the time. And the leading cause?

Letting Marketing Run The Show

Marketers whilst essential to business should never be allowed to actually run things. This is as true of manufacture as it is video production. They THINK they are experts at all things marketing and advertising, when quite often the “checklist” they insist on following just shoots them in the foot.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the sheer number of speakers Intel put up there, most of whom didn’t even say anything more than buzzwords and market-speak.

The Speakers

I mean just look at their “speakers” in order of first appearance.

1. Michelle Holthaus, Executive VP, Chief Revenue Officer, General manager of sales, marketing, and communication
2. Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s new CEO
3. Lisa Spelman, Corporate VP, General manager Xeon and memory group
4. Rick Echevarria, VP Sales, Marketing, and Communication, General Manager Intel Olympic Program
5. Steve Long, Corporate VP & General Manager CCG Sales. I’m assuming they don’t mean Collectable Card Games.
6. Chuck Duball, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer

You see the word marketing in there? A LOT? How about the fact we have FOUR vice presidents? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot does “Technical Marketing Engineer” even flipping mean?

This reminds me of back in the ‘90’s when I was Vice President of IT for a major national insurer. Well, “Vice President of information technologies for the New England-Boston sub-region south”. Because the company had over 100 vice presidents as they handed out the title to make you feel important despite being just another meaningless cog in a machine devoid of lubricant where everyone’s got broken teeth. And how to heap on a ton of responsibility without giving you a raise.

And that’s before we mention the two extra speakers who don’t even work for Intel.

Now, to be fair, let’s compare to AMD’s video.

1. Lisa Su, CEO
2. Scott Herkelman, VP & GM Graphics Business Unit.
3. Frank Azor, Chief Architech Gaming Solutions & Marketing.

Then Lisa Su comes back out to close it. Three speakers, the CEO does their job by opening and closing the video.

And really that brings us to the issue of stage time.

Too Many Voices?

Intel lacked a consistent voice. They had nine speakers over 40 minutes, and most of them were there for an average of two minutes. Only Steve Long was given any proper time at ten and a half minutes.

I mean, let’s break it down by time. I’ll be roughly rounding things off, I don’t have time to sit here dicking with perfect time indexes.

3 minutes : James Huang, Computex organizer, not even an Intel employee. 1.5 Minutes : pointless stock photo slideshow 2 Minutes : Holthaus 1.45 Minutes : Joe Sheih from AsusTek 1.5 Minutes : Holthaus 3 Minutes : Gelsinger 1.5 Minutes : Holthaus 2 Minutes : Spellman 0.5 Minutes : Holthaus 2.5 Minutes: Echevarria 3.5 Minutes : Holthaus 1.5 Minutes : Long 1 Minute : Duvall 9 Minutes : Long 0.5 Minutes : Holthaus 2.5 Minutes : Jason Chen, CEO Of Acer 1.5 Minutes : Holthaus

Now let’s look at AMD, who had the same 40 minute runtime.

1.5 Minutes : pointless animated crap, but more product relevant than Intel’s. 11.5 Minutes : Su 11 Minutes : Herkelman 8.5 Minutes : Azor 7.5 Minutes : Su

Do we see a difference here? Intel’s message felt disjointed, inconsistent, and lacking in substance, and the sheer number of voices and raw number of cuts only contributed to that feeling. It’s almost like watching lazy “action movie” direction where the mere notion of a “long shot” is outright alien.

One of the keys to a presentation is to establish a connection with the audience. Changing speakers every minute or two breaks that connection! Steve Jobs recognized this, and it’s like AMD is reading from his playbook. Intel on the other hand made a video that felt like a poster child for everything wrong with “design by committee”. Everyone threw something in with no clear roadmap.

No Audience, Inconsistent Quality

It takes a lot of talent, practice, and time to do a “talking head” video. Just ask most if not all of the tech youtubers.

AMD was smart, they used a small auditorium allowing for wide panning shots, where they had an controlled audience. This allowed the speakers to still gauge reaction and adjust on the fly. They also used “real sets” when much of Intel’s was clearly green-screened.

Lacking this Intel’s presentation not only felt flat, it also felt like they cut together the “first take” like Ed Wood was producing and directing. That the video quality of each speaker was inconsistent and fluctuated only further enhanced the notion that the entire thing was “called in last minute”.

Overscheduling

When you don’t have a lot to say, don’t try to fill a 40 minute time slot. Hit hard with key talking points, in a unified voice, and walk away. They talk about everything in vague terms because they just didn’t have more than probably eight minutes of actual content to work with.

But the above is all just about production values and planning. The real problem that makes it feel so pathetically inept?

The Painfully Obvious Attempts At Manipulating the Narrative

There are many ways to “control the narrative” using propaganda and speechcraft. The trick that Intel failed to manage is to not make it look like you are doing so.

Magic Hands

MANY people have made fun of the exaggerated and at times almost robotic over-use of hand gestures in Intel’s video. The laugh is that it is clearly choreographed, taught to people who don’t normally do it, or lack the talent to do so in a natural and fluid manner.

Sure, AMD’s folks did have some hand gestures too, but they felt natural, restrained, and just part of how they talk. You can’t say that about what was going on with Intel’s video.

There are many reasons for such gestures. It distracts from the dead stare of people who aren’t professional speakers reading off of que cards or teleprompters. It can add emotional depth in a way that voice alone cannot. It can even add to the believability of a speaker when lying because it distracts you from watching the facial expressions.

This is why many of the great orators — Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Hitler, John F Kennedy — use these techniques. It’s also why some of the most pathetic orators — Donald Trump for example — do it. It can be used to enhance what’s being said, or distract from the lack of saying anything.

I suspect the latter is what Intel was trying to accomplish, as it was plainly apparent they lacked enough content to actually fill a 40 minute video. It was also quite evident that the speakers were barely familiar with the material they were reading; a general lack of experience speaking in public, speaking outside the boardroom, or even speaking about the technical concepts they were supposed to be talking about.

And they failed miserably. I recognized most of the gestures being right out of self-help books on public speaking, but they have to be practiced, nuanced, and not exaggerated to work. 5 minutes in front of a mirror could have saved them a few weeks of open public ridicule!

Glittering Generalities

Market-speak doubletalk is always laden with these. Feel-good words closely associated with an emotional response. Their endlessly talking about “innovation” being a stunning example of this, considering they didn’t actually give any details or a proper how/what/why of where they are actually innovating. Instead they mindlessly and endlessly repeat certain keywords to try and make a truth out of an unfounded assertion.

And before some of you get your panties in a knot over my dragging Nazi’s into this, one has to remember that they were MASTERS of propaganda, and propaganda is EXACTLY what we’re discussing.

Hitler did this with the word “unshakeable” to try and sell his “conviction” to the audience. He would even joke about it. Anti-immigrant types do this constantly screaming “ILLEGALS” typing it in all caps whenever possible to dehumanize the target of their xenophobia. We see it in development frameworks that are code bloat, add complexity, take more steps, but everyone knows that they’re “EASIER!”.

When you see a word repeated endlessly, driven to the front, like Intel did with “innovation”? Keep in mind the famous quote:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” — Joseph Goebbels

Thus it is apparent that Intel is lying about any so-called “innovation”. So why would they need to lie about that?

The Lack Of “Content Of Value”

They’ve not released anything innovative in over a decade. Every one of their products across every single production line has been incremental; built on what came before. No matter how much they throw around words like “innovative” or “exciting”.

We even joke about it with their “14nm+++++++++++++”. They’ve been “stuck” on one manufacturing process as the rest of the world has moved on. Intel’s barely trickling 10nm into production when TSMC is making 3nm for Apple. It’s no shock Apple has dropped Intel like a hot potato and the market is starting to follow suit.

Their attempts to claim the “high ground” of “innovation” being front and center despite their product lines stagnating is why the entire presentation feels laden with:

Tone Deafness

They seem blissfully unaware of their current status in the public mind; which is to say at this point they’re a laughing stock. Worse than that though, they don’t seem to have grasped what Computex is, what the audience expects to hear, or even why they were there in the first place.

A great example of this relates to one of the biggest complaints amongst the tech community about Intel’s CPU product line. “Too many SKU’s”. They have so many products in one architectural generation, many of which the only “real” difference is the label on the front. For Tiger Lake they have THIRTY-SIX flavors of mobile processors. Sure they only have four desktop CPU’s at this point for that same 11th gen, but that’s barely on the market. We look at the full mature 10th gen desktop line that’s 37 consumer grade desktop processors… and if we tack the Xeons (both comet-lake and ice-lake) on there, you get another 30 or so!

It’s what in UX is referred to as “link overload”. They’re shoving so many choices at the public nobody can figure out which one to actually get! Those of us familiar with tech and manufacture recognize this as a symptom of “over-binning” and recycling rejects into very specific less capable SKU’s.

So what did Intel do about this in their presentation? They BRAGGED about how they have broken the product line into four separate target markets — business, education, mobile, and desktop… Because business and education don’t use mobile devices and desktops?!? I mean, I get it, the high reliability Xeon line for business… but education? Worse, they BRAG about 27 new processors for business, 6 for “education”, 12 for mobile, and 8 for desktop.

That in and of itself is somewhat tone-deaf, ignoring the audience. But that is exacerbated by failing to provide any detail on what those are, what ACTUALLY makes them special or “innovative”, what new features they bring to the market, etc, etc. Why don’t they say these things? The very things people go to Computex to hear?

Because all those products are just lame lazy retreads and rebranding they’ve been doing for a decade.

Their entire presentation is riddled with this, endless vague “we’re doing this, we have this” whilst providing zero detail of the how/what/why one expects at a Computex presentation! Much less any actual details on how/what they’re “innovating”.

This goes hand in hand with their prattling on about “technology solutions” related to things like the Olympics; without saying WHAT solutions, going into any sort of detail about actual technologies. Thus, tech nerds don’t give a damn since most don’t care about “Teh morinic sportsball” type stuff.

Though it’s interesting how they devoted the two and a half minutes to Echevarria’s Olympics presentation, given that the meat of that entire time is “we’re working with the Olympics on … things”. What things? Your guess is as good as mine. He told us about technology categories, but failed to discuss anything of substance.

What makes that interesting is that the Olympics has been in decline for decades, and why? Because they’re held so blasted often now they’re no longer a “rare treat”. Every two years. The word has also gotten out about how it basically trashes the economy of most places suckered into hosting, which is why you’d have to be a total idiot to want the Olympics to come to your city.

It’s the oversaturation of the Olympics that it feels like Intel is mimicking. They don’t have anything new and innovative to release, so let’s just screw with the timings and up the voltages to keep the version numbers ticking upwards. This is evident in how in many cases 11th gen fails to beat 10th gen at MSRP price to performance!

Basically, they have been and continue to fail to read the audience.

Which Is Why They Have So Much Testimonial

This is a well known propaganda technique, and it’s why they had so many guest speakers, and why they kept talking about all their relations with their business partners. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean they’re doing anything new or “innovative”. They attempted to bypass rational thought by saying “look at who we work with” instead of presenting actual facts or explanations about anything new they’re doing. Much like “Glittering Generalities” this is marketing bullshit 101.

And It Feels Cheap!

The video production quality is far below what even most amateur Youtubers make, and utterly in the basement compared to more professional YT channels like LTT, Gamers Nexus, JayzTwoCents, etc, etc. The script clearly wasn’t rehearsed, isn’t read naturally, and the attempts at visual manipulation were done so half-assed, half of Youtube is making fun of the “magic hands”.

It literally feels like a Ed Wood production with Uvve Boll directing a script by Tommy Wiseau, starring Pauly Shore and Madonna. A typical stilted one-take amateurish production.

So What’s Really Going On?

For Intel, not a blasted thing; least so far as “innovations” that impact the tech world. They have two new sku’s that slot into an existing line, they’re upping wafer supply/production, trying to work the kinks out of supply runs.

That’s not innovation, that’s just making more of the same!

When you have little or nothing to say, you bullshit. Intel is in a really rough spot in that they’re being chipped away at from all sides. From Apple proving that ARM can actually be competitive — something if you told me six years ago would be a thing, I’d have yelled “bullshit!” — opening the door for other ARM makers to do the same, to AMD having matched and ever surpassed them in many arenas, to many of their side projects failing and needing to be spun off into sub-companies before they sink.

This is why they’ve had to go hat-in-hand to TSMC for things their “design by committee” fabs can’t produce. This is why they’re trying to have marketers and propaganda make up for what their designers, engineers, and facilities cannot.

… and I’ve seen this before. At IBM. At DEC. At Wang. It is the early warning signs of a once great giant having rested on its laurels, and slowly falling from grace from too many cooks, and failing to put focus where they really need it. They have fallen behind, and don’t seem to be putting serious effort towards even catching up, much less leap-frogging the competition. They look like they’re standing still.

To be brutally frank, Intel is exactly where AMD was before Lisa Su made the giant gamble, betting the entire company on Zen. Being a larger company ridiculously beholden to its shareholders, Intel is likely to remain unable to make such a giant shift in how they do things. Certainly without significant organizational restructuring ever be able to shift with the market, as the upper management will remain stuck in the past, trying to replicate previous successes instead of banking on something new. They have become too big, too slow, and too set in their ways; and like all companies who reach this point, moving about nearly rudderless with nobody clearly taking the leadership role, they are going over the falls.

And the more you see their marketing teams acting as the face of the company, with no clear enthusiasm by the person who’s supposed to be their actual leader, they will continue to rumble-stumble-fumble about.

Gelsinger should have been on a stage — a REAL stage — leading the charge, talking about WHAT they’re actually innovating and not just throwing buzzwords around. He should have been at least HALF the video’s runtime speaking with conviction, not “phoning it in” like we had here.

Which is why people like him usually end up bosses, not leaders. The video clearly showed that Intel has no clear leader, somebody out in front of things. Someone who cares about quality. When you can’t even make a competent video presentation with the alleged billions their company is worth, how are we supposed to believe that they are capable of producing complex technologies with any degree of skill, diligence, or knowledge?

And that’s the REAL Intel problem. Too many cooks. They NEED a leader and to be frank, Gelsinger and all of these alleged “Vice presidents” aren’t it. The company is becoming top-heavy with investors, marketers, and “yes men”, and the rest of the company is failing because of it. With results like we’ve seen the past 6–8 years, it’s becoming clear that they are now just another giant company of suits who are slowly draining resources away from design, development, and production.

That lack of leadership is what has led to the over-reliance on marketspeak and manipulative propaganda methods, all fall flat because audiences now recognize it, are tired of it, and know when you’re pretty much just playing bullshit bingo.