Dubai Harbor is an exquisite seafront district by Shamal Holding, comprising a marina, a cruise terminal, unrivaled F&B, luxury living, and lifestyle experiences. Our task was to give Dubai Harbour a new modern edge that would articulate this unique blend and brand sentiment. Our objectives were to modernize and strengthen the brand, giving it a world-class identity to make it feel more premium without alienating the masses. The budget was part of the agency retainer. In terms of scale, our brand refresh was a complete brand overhaul for any imaginable brand collateral and touch point—a 360-degree brand refresh.

We started our brand refresh by articulating a new brand sentiment in the form of a brand manifesto. A manifesto that encapsulates and instantly describes the brand and what it evokes, which is "it's a sea state of mind." This became the new brand ethos. From the old branding, we carried forward one element from the old logo. a piece that became the perfect expression of our "sea state of mind" sentiment—an element that looks just like a smile. From this "smile," we created a whole new brand design system, seeping into every brand deliverable. Our target audience spanned from cruise ship passengers to regular boat owners to superyacht owners to people interested in top-end F&B, lifestyle experiences, and luxury living both locally and outside of Dubai.

To "anchor" the brand so that it would clearly communicate that it's all about a marine lifestyle—"the sea state of mind"—we transformed the logo mark into an anchor containing the initials D and H. This was paired with the above-mentioned "smile" design system. For our color palette, we changed it to a vibrant ocean blue and paired it with an off-white color inspired by ocean foam. The top-to-bottom redesign worked in tandem with our revamped brand communication and enhanced photography style, which had a distinct blue tint. The touchpoints were a complete brand overhaul with any touchpoint imaginable in all channels, ranging from the logo, color palette, a new unique font, collaterals like stationery, iconography, signage, and templates for ads of every imaginable variety for digital and print.

Looking at the impact that our brand refresh has had, we can conclude that it has made a significant difference. For instance, between July 2022 and January 2023, Dubai Harbour's Instagram account increased its follower base by 36.25%; Twitter followers increased by 127.64%; and the LinkedIn account increased by 154 percent in the last 3 months. and footfall has tripled. Brand awareness has definitely increased with a noticeable increase in UGC content across social media, with even celebrities and influencers tagging Dubai Harbour (on their own behalf). In terms of commercial impact, the F&B outlet is constantly fully booked. The event sizes being hosted at Dubai Harbour are also getting bigger (for instance, Dubai Harbour hosted the only official FIFA fan zone in Dubai during the World Cup, and the International Boat is also getting bigger—all signs alluding to the growing success of the brand).