355 ARTICLE Jack Daniel’s America Iconic brands as ideological parasites and proselytizers DOUGLAS B. HOLT Oxford University Abstract. Branding is often viewed as a form of ideological influence, but how brands impact ideology has not been carefully specified. I use a genealogical study of the emergence of Jack Daniel’s Whiskey as an iconic brand to specify the ideological role played by such brands in relation to other producers of ideological change, particularly the other culture industries. I demonstrate that brands play a distinctive role, quite different from that critics have described: brands act as parasites riding the coat-tails of other more powerful cultural forms,but then use their market power to proselytize these ideological revisions. Through ubiquity and repetition, brands transform emergent culture into dominant norms. Key words consumer culture ● consumption ● marketing ● masculinity COCACOLONIZATION. JIHAD VS. MCWORLD. THE Lexus and the Olive Tree. Brands are routinely accused of, or celebrated for, playing a key ideo- logical role in the advance of consumer society. Given their prominence, it’s not hard to believe that brands play a role. But what is it, exactly, that these brands do? Dozens of scholars and critics have penned diatribes lambasting the cultural power of brands (e.g. Lasn, 2000), while apologists have responded with odes that stridently deny such accusations (e.g. Twitchell, 1999). This Manichean discussion rarely moves beyond vague formulations: brands as global hegemons versus brands as lifestyle props reflecting basic human Journal of Consumer Culture Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) Vol 6(3): 355–377 1469-5405 [DOI: 10.1177/1469540506068683] www.sagepublications.com 04_holt_068683 (jk-t) 2/8/06 11:15 am Page 355