There is a new buzzword around these days about our country: “Brand India”. It’s an idea, says the subtitle of a forthcoming book by London-based Niclas Ljungberg, whose time has come.

Brand value

But what is that idea? What, for that matter, is Brand India? A brand, the marketing gurus tell us, is a symbol embodying all the key information about a product or a service: it could be a name, a slogan, a logo, a graphic design. When the brand is mentioned, it carries with it a whole series of associations in the public mind, as well as expectations of how it will perform. The brand can be built up by skilful advertising, so that certain phrases or moods pop up the moment one thinks of the brand; but ultimately the only real guarantee of the brand’s continued worth is the actual performance of the product or service it stands for. If the brand delivers what it promises — if it proves to be a reliable indicator of what the consumer can expect, time after time — then it becomes a great asset in itself. Properly managed, the brand can increase the perceived value of a product or service in the eyes of the consumer. Badly managed, a tarnished brand can undermine the product itself.

So can India be a brand? A country isn’t a soft drink or a cigarette, but its very name can conjure certain associations in the minds of others. This is why our first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, insisted on retaining the name “India” for the newly independent country, in the face of resistance from nativists who wanted it renamed “Bharat”. “India” had a number of associations in the eyes of the world: it was a fabled and exotic land, much sought after by travellers and traders for centuries, the “jewel in the crown” of Her Britannic Majesty Victoria, whose proudest title was that of “Empress of India”. Nehru wanted people to understand that the India he was leading was heir to that precious heritage. He wanted, in other words, to hold on to the brand, though it was not a term he was likely to have employed.

Changing fortunes

For a while, it worked. India retained its exoticism, its bejewelled maharajahs and caparisoned elephants against a backdrop of the fabled Taj Mahal, while simultaneously striding the world stage as a moral force for peace and justice in the vein of Mahatma Gandhi. But it couldn’t last. As poverty and famine stalked the land, and the exotic images became replaced in the global media with pictures of suffering and despair, the brand became soiled. It stood, in many people’s eyes, for a mendicant with a begging-bowl, a hungry and skeletal child by his side. It was no longer a brand that could attract the world.

Today, the brand is changing again. As India transforms itself economically from a lumbering elephant to a bounding tiger, it needs a fresh brand image to keep up with the times. The Government even set up, with the collaboration of the business association the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), an India Brand Equity Foundation. They were tasked with coming up with a slogan that encapsulated the new brand in time for the World Economic Forum’s 2006 session in Davos, where India was the guest of honour. They did. “India: Fastest-growing free market democracy” was emblazoned all over the Swiss resort. Brand India was born.

The essence in words

But though it’s a great slogan, is it enough? Coca-Cola, for years, offered the “pause that refreshes”: it told you all that you needed to know about the product. Does “fastest-growing free market democracy” do the same? India’s rapid economic growth is worth drawing attention to, as is the fact that it’s a free market (we want foreigners to invest, after all) and a democracy (that’s what distinguishes us from that other place over there, which for years has grown faster than us). But isn’t there more to us as a country than that?

In fairness to the smart people who coined the phrase, the more attributes you try to get in, the clunkier the phrase and the less memorable it becomes. It’s easier for smaller countries that aim for one-issue branding. The Bahamas came up with the great message “It’s better in the Bahamas”. Puerto Rico sold itself as a “tropical paradise”, and there’s “surprisingly Singapore”. But what do we want the world to think of when they hear the name “India”?

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