(Product) RED Thanks Apple For Their Contributions, Clarifies Comments Made by Bono at Cannes Lions

(Product) RED has thanked Apple for the $75 million the company has donated to fight AIDS in a blog post today. Back in April the charity announced that Apple's contributions had reached $70 million. RED also addressed the comments made by U2's Bono at the Cannes Lions festival last week. Bono took a jab at Apple's quiet involvement in the charity while Jony Ive was on stage.

"One of the reasons it's such a credit to have Jony Ive on the stage," Bono told panel moderator and Vice CEO Shane Smith, "is because Apple is so fucking annoyingly quiet about the fact they've raised $75 million. Nobody knows!"

Bono went so far as to stand up, pull out an official (Red) iPad cover and remove the device, illustrating to the audience that the only actual nod to the nonprofit was inside the cover and therefore always obscured by the tablet.

"Where's the (Red) branding?" he asked Ive. "Nobody can see that. This is modesty run amok. This is the Apple way. They're like a religious cult."

However, According to RED, Bono was just teasing Apple about its reluctance to take credit for its charitable work.

During the session, Bono teased Jony about Apple’s modesty and reluctance to take credit for its charitable work, including the whopping $75 million Apple has donated to the fight against AIDS through its partnership with (RED). In a reminder that humor doesn’t always travel out of context, some of Bono’s teasing and faux outrage at Apple’s modesty were reported as actual criticism of the company. Nothing could be further from the truth of course. Bono has been one of Apple’s biggest supporters, pushing back publicly on those who have made negative assumptions about the company’s charitable work, simply because they don’t shout it from the rooftops. That modesty is their right, and in many ways admirable. Bono and all of us at (RED) are so grateful to Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Jony Ive and the entire Apple team for the game-changing impact they have made for (RED) and the fight against this disease.

(RED) Proud Partners include: Apple, Starbucks, The Coca-Cola Company, Bank of America, Beats by Dr. Dre, Belvedere, Claro, SAP, Telcel and Live Nation Entertainment. To date (RED) has generated more than $250 million in an effort to support HIV/AIDS grants in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zambia.


You can check out Apple's current RED products here.

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