I think people have a hard time grasping the concept of 'cross promotion'. If U2 was to do a commercial for the new Ford Ranger, they don't get alot of mileage out of it, after all, a Ford pickup isn't exactly a sexy or relevant cultural symbol right now (has it ever been?). It's basically a one-way street: Ford gets the most benefit from having U2 sing their praises, so to speak. Conversely, iPod was the rage during the last ad campaign and U2 benefited by being associated with it as much as Apple did from being associated with U2. Similarly, the Blackberry is a huge item right now and is probably the hottest phone/communication device on the market. Being linked to that is as valuable to U2 as being linked to U2 is for RIM.
Having said all that...we saw this commercial on TV the other day. My son went 'oh look U2'. My daughter was later heard humming the melody to Crazy Tonight, so that worked, I guess. I think she may have heard the song once or twice before that.
Noone laughed, nor did my son's indie sensibilities get the better of him and cause him to attack me with a fork over dessert for not openly chastising U2 for getting in bed with RIM.
In fact, life just kindof carried on. Weird how that works.