Apple and U2

An IMC campaign failure that I am writing about is the infamous “Apple and U2 album giveaway”. In 2014, Apple partnered with the band U2 and automatically downloaded U2’s newest album onto every iPhone and iPad. On a Tuesday morning, everybody woke up to see their devices with a new full album downloaded onto them. Apple did this so that customers would appreciate Apple for giving them free music. It ended blowing up in Apple’s faces. Customers saw the fact that there was a full album automatically downloaded onto their phones without consent as a major breach of privacy. The failure in the process here was the album being downloaded without people choosing to have it downloaded or not. There is no problem with free stuff -consumers love free stuff. Apple wanting to give out a free album is a great campaign idea. The problem is when they put it on everybody’s phones as a surprise. There was no communication in advance about it happening, and there was no choice for consumers. Consumers need choices and they need communication. The step that was not followed correctly was having it automatically downloaded onto every Apple user’s device. The step that they could have used instead was offering the giveaway, and giving consumers the option to download the album for free. Apple could have advertised it in advance on social media and offered the choice for consumers to download the album. If they did that, it could have been better received. The IMC finding that I would go back in time and share with Apple Management is to not do something without giving the consumer the choice.