Paul Temporal, based at the university's Said Business School, wrote in a research paper that India needs to differentiate itself from China, ASEAN, Japan and other countries and clusters that were competing for investment, talent, tourism and exports.
"The brand challenge for India is to develop a strategy that presents a uniform national identity alongside internal diversity ... A fragmented image is not a powerful one, and the image of any country needs strong brand management led from the top," he wrote.
Stating that the branding of countries was now fast becoming a constant agenda item in cabinet meetings, Temporal said although India has positive growth and massive potential, it will continue to be faced with intense competition from China and others. India, he said, had not been immune to the global recession but had not been "badly wounded" by it.
"So, efforts to brand India now will ensure that when global markets recover, as they undoubtedly will, India will be first out of the blocks. To delay will not be catastrophic, but it may place India further behind the competition in the longer term," he wrote.
Image, he wrote, cannot be built by advertising and promotions but via astute policy change management based on the needs of 'customers'.
These include greater ease of doing business, less bureaucracy, visa facilitation, improved security and improvements to infrastructure are among the policy issues that countries. "All such 'touch points' a nation has with the outside world influence the total perceptions that make up its image. Policies and diplomacy change a country's national image, not tactical communications campaigns," Temporal wrote.
According to him, India's diversity can be advantageous for areas such as tourism. India's rising industries such as automobiles, IT and pharmaceuticals were powerful brand image vectors while its corporations were strong brand ambassadors.
"Beyond the obvious there are also substantial opportunities for branding in more traditional product categories such as Kashmiri clothing and basmati rice, but the strengths of all these 'sub-brands' need to be channelled into, and driven by, a master brand strategy required to build the India of the future," Temporal wrote.