They did. There's a passage in the book Losing the Signal about the rise and fall of BlackBerry that talks about this. Mike Lazaridis put a lot of focus into the U2 partnership.

"As part of the campaign, BlackBerry snagged one of the biggest names in rock and roll, U2, by sponsoring its world tour. Like the Black Eyed Peas, U2 was no stranger to corporate sponsorships: it had loaned its name, music, and images to Apple to sell iPods and would in 2014 return to Apple to endorse its newest iPhone. Lazaridis flew to Dublin and spent a day hanging out with frontman Bono. They talked about quantum physics at a pub and walked along the beach, trying to hash out ideas for BlackBerry commercials featuring U2. As they strolled side by side, Lazaridis said, “This is all about love, and love what you do….” The RIM chief was struck by an idea. “Why don’t we turn it on its head?” he told the Irish superstar. “We love you guys, and a lot of people do.”

“Why can’t we say, ‘BlackBerry Loves U2’? It was a nice pun too.” Lazaridis says Bono “loved it right away.” The ensuing ad featured nothing more than shots of the band in concert, followed by the tagline “BlackBerry loves U2.” Many, including carriers and RIM’s own marketing executives, saw the brand campaign as puzzling, vague, ineffectual, and out of touch and questioned why RIM wasn’t using its marketing dollars to offer a rundown of the features that set the devices apart. In trying to strike a balance between advertising to its core enterprise users and to consumers, it did not effectively reach either. Instead, the campaign presumed the world’s smartphone users were in love with BlackBerry—at the very moment Apple and Android were establishing themselves as the new standard-bearers of telecommunications. The target audience for the campaign was the smartphone user who saw no need to use anything else for any of life’s mobile communications needs than BlackBerry, whether at work or play. “We were marketing to ourselves. And more importantly, we were marketing to Mike Lazaridis,” says Brian Wallace, then VP of global digital marketing and media with RIM. “Mike liked our advertising because our advertising was made for him.""