Superbowl + will.i.am + FRC hat

[Joe G.]

Maybe I'm the only one, but I'm actually glad that they didn't get up there and make a blatant "FIRST is cool, go check it out" statement. Why? Because more likely than not, it would have backfired. The purpose of the half-time show, and in fact the entire Superbowl, is entertainment. Entertainment is what people expect, and the masses would have been dissappointed in anything less, or more, than that. Anything more than entertainment, in the direction that some of you seem to have expected, would have been interpreted as little less than outright product placement. And the fact that we are a fan of the product being placed, or the fact that it's a genuinely good product, doesn't make the action any better...would you have said "oh wow, this is really great!" if he had made a shout-out to Pepsi, or Bridgestone, or any of the products being advertised throughout the game?

I realize that there's a difference between FIRST and a soft drink. But people who do not know about FIRST, do not know this. I guarantee, if he had made a blatant shout-out, the reaction of the masses would have been "Oh wow, Will.I.Am has totally sold out, lets see what dumb organization paid him off." Not the kind of publicity you want.

In this case, subtle is good. This isn't going to change the culture overnight, and it would be unreasonable to expect the superbowl halftime show to do that. Most people won't have noticed a thing. But the few that might have will be curious. Maybe there'll be an interview, news story, or something that'll get a bit more publicity. It won't be revolutionary. But it won't be terrible either.

And besides, the real sign that FIRST is changing the culture is not what Will.I.Am puts on his hats. Its the people who sat around their computers at kickoff, listened to Will.I.Am get introduced, and said things like "Who?" and "Aw, I wanted to hear Dean Kamen speak."

Everyone just remember, we're not a big community, and that's not going to change overnight. But to change it eventually, we have to hang together, and embody the ideals that we work to spread.

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