gurupanguji
This was such a boneheaded marketing decision on Apple’s part. They cost themselves way more in goodwill and trust than they possibly could have earned in additional F1 The Movie — wait, sorry, my bad, F1® The Movie — box office ticket sales. It’s like Apple got paid to exemplify Cory Doctorow’s “enshittification” theory. Apple Wallet doesn’t present itself as a marketing vehicle. It presents itself as a privacy-protecting system service.
Daring Fireball: Apple Wallet Sends Push Notification Ad Pushing 'F1 The Movie'
Apple's been making some questionable decisions these days. That said, here's one counterpoint - the US has about 52MM F1 fans, with fandom surging in popularity. Netflix's Drive to Survive is incredibly popular and thrives on Netflix marketing it to oblivion. US has about 155MM iPhone users.
You can see how someone at Apple could have made a compelling argument to suggest this was a good plan. Here's how it might have gone:
There are 155MM iphone users in US and it's our largest Wallet market as well. With F1 fandom surging, imagine how thrilled users might be when we present them an opportunity to save money on F1 tickets just by using their Wallet. Wallet is the best way to pay for things online and offline and majority of these tickets will be purchased on fandango anyway. Win/Win/Win 💰 especially as it's critical we need F1 the Movie to do well the first week on the box office.
Now, the truth is that it didn't end up that way at all. I am confident that Wallet, Apple or F1 didn't think that this will bomb and erode their hard earned brand value. I think this is because of optimism goggles that most of Silicon Valley puts on most of the time. Honestly, it's not a bad thing. It's almost why "making mistakes" is also a logical corollary to this mode. Apple's just not made that many mistakes in such a long time that many of us fans thought they were above it all. I personally accept these last few months of faux-pas as nothing but a correction to the normal.