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Comment by lucianbr | Hacker News Reader

These declarations sound so stupid to me. What's the point of having your brand on a product, if you're going to claim you have nothing to do with it? What is the point of the concept of a brand even?

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To make money, like with all the merchandising that happens with a popular movie. Any number of things are licensed with the owner of the IP having very limited involvement in it, like turning down certain types of licenses as bad for the brand but not getting into the weeds of manufacturing. It's not like if there was some branded Disney cell phone that Disney is going to inspect all the board-level components. I can't speak about this pager company other than to think they're glad for any business they could get, so would license the brand.

There must be some other ostensible purpose for a brand than "to make money". People who would buy the hypothetical Disney phone would have other reasons than "to give Disney money". Nobody has that as a goal when buying stuff.

People form subconscious connections to a brand. You are more likely to buy a Disney phone for your kid if it gives you a warm feeling because you remember how much fun it was to watch Lion King with your kid. That might not be the deciding factor, but if it's functionally identical to the other other phones it might make the difference.

Yeah, but I don't think the subconscious factor is strong in the case of some pagers sold to Hezbollah. Disney was an example someone chose, and it ceases to be a useful example here.

The goal of the brand owners is to make money, for the customer the value should be a certain reputation of quality. But as long as customers don’t notice or punish it, it’s advantageous to sell out your brand to make more money (from the perspective of the brand owner)

And isn't it strange when a company publicly declares that you can't have any expectations based on their brand? Seems like they're drawing customers' attention to the thing, instead of hoping they don't notice.

Possibly the pagers had to have a popular brand to "work as designed", and this brand was up for sale, but declares it won't admit this to the real customers.

I guess with QR-Code Menus, Smartphones replacing their tech almost everywhere, Starlink etc. they where happy to take any revenue.

To prepare for lawsuits from families of the injured in what appears to be a supply chain attack maybe without the knowledge of their licensee in Budapest (BAC Consulting), and likely without their (Gold Apollo) knowledge. Deny and distance.

Brands died as anything reliable from the consumer perspective when the Chinese bought all the dying brands in the 2000s.

The only cheap goods with maintained brands are things like McDonald's which have recurring relationship with consumers.

Even if brands have died, companies admitting it is somewhat novel.

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