If you lived through the peak years of Irish rock band U2, you may remember Bono as the band’s charismatic front-runner, creative genius, and global philanthropist extraordinaire. Alternatively, you may remember him as “that guy who spent most of a decade loudly repeating ‘yeah’ over melodramatic guitar riffs.” Unfortunately, there are those among us who never had the glorious privilege of living through the fantastic blur of JanSport backpacks, ring pops, stonewashed denim and white Michael Jackson that was the late 80s and 90s.

Instead, these deprived souls will remember U2 as the band that showed up in their iTunes library without ever being downloaded. That’s because in 2014 Apple signed a $54M deal with U2 for a five week exclusivity window on the distribution of their album Songs of Innocence, during which time the album was automatically downloaded to millions of iTunes libraries around the world, free of either charge or consent.

The initial distribution of Songs of Innocence was a bold innovation in music promotion, prompting Chris Richards of The Washington Post to describe the release as presenting “rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail… U2’s new album was just there, waiting for you. Like an Ikea catalogue. Or a jury summons. Or streptococcus.“

In short, the automatic download felt invasive, and U2s’ bold new release strategy ultimately paved the way for less than stellar sales and chart performance. The album debuted at number nine on UK charts and was gone in six weeks, a record low for U2.

While the music industry is fueled by innovation and controversy, some basic business strategies still stand and the Songs of Innocence release disregarded several crucial elements of marketing success. There are two major aspects of a promotional or advertising experience that can dramatically shape consumer perspectives, outlined here as they pertain to this album debut.

Personal Agency

U2 is far from the first group of artists to experiment with novel payment models. In 2007, Radiohead broke headlines when they released their album In Rainbows as a pay-what-you-want download. Users could visit the Radiohead website, opt out of paying at all, and still listen to the album for free. Several months later, Radiohead had made more money from digital sales of In Rainbows than they had from all their previous albums combined.

The disparity of commercial success between In Rainbows and Songs of Innocence has to do with a lot more than just marketing strategy. However, it’s worth noting the key difference in distribution between the two album debuts. Both strategies risked devaluing the offered product, and both relied on consumers to choose to pay when they didn’t have to. The difference was that fans had to seek out Radiohead’s new album on their own, whereas the U2 album was pushed on consumers through iTunes.

The release of the U2 album left consumers without any agency. It was theirs whether they wanted it or not, and that shifted attitudes dramatically. Consider the success of the Groupon app, which is ostensibly an electronic coupon book. Users browse discounts, deals, and sales from local businesses, pay by smart phone, and redeem their purchases in person. The widely used and convenient app offers the same type of deals that frequently show up in pop-ups and spam, yet Groupon makes it fun, whereas the latter are regarded as a nuisance.

Here, again, the major difference is in agency. Consumers choose to browse Groupon on their own, so it’s a pleasure. People are forced into viewing pop-ups and spam, so it’s a nuisance. The products here can be largely the same, but the difference in agency completely changes consumer perceptions.

Discovery

Another concept intimately linked to agency is the sense of discovery. People like finding things. That quaint coffee shop two blocks from the main strip, the bookstore that carries all your favorite authors and editions, that one place that serves your favorite comfort food, and that shampoo that really does what it says… We define our tastes through our personal discoveries.

Far from going unnoticed, a number of successful websites and applications like Pandora, Spotify, Netflix, and Yelp shape their entire business model around the same yearning for discovery. With suggestions and user reviews based around individual tastes, people are guided to new products and experiences through these platforms and others. Where they succeed, websites and applications that facilitate consumer discovery maintain the sense of a personally tailored search controlled by the user.

When it came to the Songs of Innocence distribution, anyone with an iTunes accounts immediately owned the album. There was nothing left to discover. It was just there.  The issue is that there’s a certain appeal to obscurity and exclusivity that puts marketers in a bit of a bind. On the one hand, any good campaign goes through extensive lengths to establish brand recognition and visibility. On the other hand, it’s ideal for your consumers to feel like they found your product, instead of your product finding them.

The best way to look at this is to recognize that the goal of a good marketing campaign is to leave a trail of bread crumbs leading to the sale, not to repeatedly toss the loaf at consumers in the hopes that it will stick. You want to make sure that there’s a wealth of information available about your product and that it’s easy to find, but you don’t want to push your product too hard at people.

In the clamoring landscape of modern ad space, it often feels like more is better. However, while it may be tempting to shout your brand and products as loud and as far as possible, it’s tantamount to consider the consumer-side experience. As illustrated by the Songs of Innocence launch, failing to do so can easily devalue your product. A properly executed marketing campaign shapes the consumer experience around a sense of personal choice and discovery that leaves people with a sense of excitement about engaging with a product.

In addition to going on rants about old rock albums, Mehran is a long-time contributor, creating content and copy for Words by a Pro.