Fans wait outside the Toronto building where U2 was filming an episode of ‘Spectacle With…Elvis Costello” on Tuesday night:
Back in March, I found myself in a Boston bar next to Bono. It was a meet’n’greet event following the last of three trans-America club-shows-and-radio-broadcasts. Research in Motion and U2 had recently announced a partnership involving a Blackberry tie-in for the upcoming U2:360 tour.
This was big, big news given that U2 and Apple seemed to have had an unbreakable friendship. I mean, Steve Jobs once hugged Bono in public. Steve doesn’t hug anyone. What happened?
“I’m fascinated to see what you and RIM are going to do,” I said.
“RIM is going to do what Apple wouldn’t,” Bono replied, “Give us access to their labs and their people.”
Whoa. This was a scoop. Nothing had been reported about this. Knowing that I had about 30 seconds before Bono’s handlers hauled him away, I pressed on, grasping at...anything.
“I could see RIM developing some kind of app that would involve some kind of social networking with the audience on any upcoming tour.”
Bono paused and then smiled. “Something like that,” he said. And then he was gone.
In the months that followed, we saw RIM introduce the Blackberry Tour world phone. There was also this commercial entitled “Blackberry Loves U2.”
But where was that app Bono hinted it? There was at least one online teaser campaign, http://na.blackberry.com/eng/u2/ but the entire opening leg of the tour passed without anything new from RIM.
It finally arrived Tuesday (September 15) in the form of the U2 Mobile Album. Given that RIM is a proudly Canadian company, it was cool that everyone held back until the tour actually touched down in Canada.
But how did RIM land this deal in the first place? What happened to the supposedly solid relationship with Apple? And you’d suspect—rightly so, too—that every single mobile handset manufacturer in the universe coveted a chance to work with the Biggest Living Band in the Universe™. How did RIM end up with the gig over Apple, let alone Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and all the rest?
Since that fast Bono encounter in March, I’ve had a chance to talk to a number of people close to the situation. Here’s what I learned.
The Apple Deal
No one does business like U2. Principle Management and U2 Ltd, led by manager Paul McGuinness, knows exactly what they’re doing every step of the way. They work in a cycle of four to five years centered around an album release and a tour. In order to make each cycle as successful as possible, Principle and U2 Ltd incorporate a variety of partners who help with ancillary projects.
For example, a big part of the strategy for How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb centred around the Apple, the iPod and iTunes. Apple issued a limited edition red-and-white U2 iPod, used “Vertigo” in a TV commercial around the time of the album’s release and then released 150+ U2 tracks via iTunes, including many rarities, unreleased recordings and exclusives.
And it went deeper. Anytime you opened a Best Buy or Future Shop flyer, the photos of all the iPods featured that shot of Bono in profile singing into a mic. And if you go to your iPod menus on your Touch or iPhone, you’ll see that the icon for “Artists” is a silhouette of that same photo of Bono.
Meanwhile, Bono turned into an Apple fanboy, evangelizing the glories of the company and the design prowess of Jonathan Ive and the iPod team. Here’s what he told me.
As you’d guess, Apple was given the first crack at doing something cool when it was time for U2’s next five year plan. So what happened?
I’ve long maintained that Paul McGuinness is the smartest and best manager in rock. He and the band know that if they’re going to continue this little enterprise that they need to change with the times and the technology.
Having seen what’s become of social networking and anticipating what is just now being dubbed “social music” by mobile media experts, he and the band approached Apple about doing something cool for the next five year plan.
Apple, of course, was interested. But sources close to the situation say that Steve Jobs went a little too far with what he expected in return. I’ve heard—but can’t confirm—that Jobs asked for exclusive rights to distribute the next album for a period or one or two months. When U2 pointed out that this would hurt them in territories where Apple doesn’t have any reach—think of all the countries where you still can’t get an iPod or access iTunes—things began to break down.
U2 is a global brand worth billions of dollars. Why would they sacrifice album sales—still a huge source of revenue for them—for Apple? And with file-sharing being what it is, pirated digital copies would simply spread around the globe within hours of any exclusive Apple release.
If you’re a I’m a fan in, say, Uruguay, how would you feel knowing that fans in more plugged in countries could get the while you had to wait two months for it to appear in your local store? And knowing how McGuinness feels about file-sharing and the role of ISPs, this whole idea was a non-starter. But Jobs wouldn’t budge. The love affair was over.
RIM Gets the Gig
With Apple out of the picture, McGuinness sent feelers out to all the other handset manufacturers, including RIM. I’ve been told that all the big players made very good, very technical pitches about the programs they could write, the networks they could access and the devices they could deliver. So how did RIM win the day?
Here are some things to consider:
• The Blackberry and the iPhone have been going head-to-head in the smartphone wars for years. Blackberry owns the business world while the iPhone is a consumer favourite. Each want to get into the other’s real estate. RIM saw a U2 alliance as a way of extending its global brand even further—and into the consumer space.
• RIM chief Jim Balsillie is a HUGE music fan. This is a guy who paid Aerosmith, the Hip and Van Halen do play private shows for his employees.
• Jeff McDowell.
• Who’s Jeff McDowell?
Jeff is a U2 fan from way back, a guy who started buying albums in the early 80s. Today, it’s the VP of Global Alliances with RIM. The story goes like this—and I hope it’s true.
Jeff was apparently called to pitch U2 on RIM’s capabilities at the last second and thus didn’t come with the PowerPoint dog-and-pony show like all the other manufacturers. Instead of getting all geeky and technical, Jeff merely reminisced about how much U2 had meant to him when he was growing up. He talked about going to shows and how he loved the look and feel of The Joshua Tree album when he first held it in his hands. He was obviously an unabashed U2 fan.
Although the U2 folks liked what the other handset manufacturers were offering, it was this emotional appeal to the band’s creative side that swayed them. Just like Bono rhapsodized about the design elegance of the iPod, he and the others were convinced to go with RIM—and specifically Jeff--because they got it when it came to making an emotional connection with fans.
A deal was signed and delivered. Access was given to labs and people. And as of this past Tuesday, the results of Jeff’s appeal to the band are finally becoming more apparent. Now we can sit back and see what kind of effects RIM’s U2 app has both on Blackberry sales and the way U2 interacts with their fans.
I wonder what Steve Jobs is thinking?
