Senior Marketing Manager

Asteco; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 200,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading real estate marketing firm is seeking a Senior Marketing Manager to build Saadiyat Grove as a vibrant destination. The role emphasizes driving awareness and community engagement through creative storytelling and integrated marketing campaigns. The ideal candidate will have 5-10 years' experience in destination or luxury marketing and a strong agency management background, ensuring cultural relevance and long-term brand equity. This position is based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Qualifications

• 5-10 years’ experience in destination, lifestyle, luxury, or mixed-use marketing.
• Proven track record of building brands and destinations.
• Strong agency-management and cross-functional leadership experience.

Responsibilities

• Assist in developing the destination narrative across all channels.
• Manage integrated marketing campaigns for the destination.
• Concept and deliver experiential activations in various spaces.

Skills

Destination marketing

Brand building

Agency management

Cultural storytelling

Stakeholder management

Job description

Job Purpose

Senior Marketing Manager is responsible for building Saadiyat Grove as a living, evolving destination. The role focuses on driving awareness, desirability, footfall, and cultural relevance across retail, F&B, offices, public realm and residential, ensuring Saadiyat Grove is known as the default cultural and lifestyle neighborhood in Abu Dhabi.

This role sits at the intersection of brand, experience, partnerships, content, and community, with a strong emphasis on storytelling, activation, and long-term destination equity.

Key Responsibilities

Destination Brand & Narrative

• Assist in developing the Saadiyat Grove destination narrative, ensuring consistency across all touchpoints (campaigns, content, events, partnerships).
• Translate the master brand positioning into clear, compelling seasonal and annual storytelling arcs.
• Ensure Saadiyat Grove is positioned as a cultural, creative and social hub, not just a retail or real estate offer.

Campaigns & Always-On Marketing

• Plan and deliver integrated destination campaigns (ATL, BTL, digital, social, PR, OOH).
• Manage the annual destination marketing calendar, balancing launches, cultural moments, seasonal peaks and always-on visibility.
• Oversee agencies (creative, media, PR, social) to ensure output is strategic, premium and measurable.

Experience, Activation & Placemaking

• Concept and deliver experiential activations across public realm, retail and cultural spaces (e.g. art, music, design, food, wellness).
• Collaborate closely with retail, leasing and operations to ensure marketing aligns with tenant mix and on-ground experience.
• Champion human-centered, culturally relevant programming that encourages repeat visitation and dwell time.

Content & Community

• Oversee destination content strategy (editorial, video, social, experiential storytelling).
• Build a strong sense of community with residents, workers, creatives, families, visitors.
• Ensure social channels feel alive, culturally fluent and human.

Performance, Insight & Optimization

• Track and report on KPIs including footfall, dwell time, engagement, awareness, sentiment and campaign performance.
• Use insight and data to continually refine campaigns and experiences.
• Balance brand-building with performance accountability.

Key Stakeholder Management

• Internal: Retail, Communities, Development, Marketing
• External: Creative agencies, media partners, cultural institutions, brand partners, event producers.

Experience and Skills

• 5-10 years’ experience in destination, place, lifestyle, luxury, cultural or mixed-use marketing
• Proven track record of building brands and destinations
• Experience working across retail, hospitality, culture or real estate environments
• Strong agency-management and cross-functional leadership experience
• Extensive experience navigating procurement and finance in complex matrix organizations
• Strategic thinker with strong creative judgement.
• Deep understanding of placemaking, experiential marketing and cultural storytelling.
• Commercially astute, with the ability to link brand activity to tangible outcomes.
• Confident stakeholder manager with experience in complex matrix organizations who can influence without hierarchy.
• Curious, culturally literate and internationally minded.
• Equally comfortable with big-picture vision and operational delivery.
• Values craft, quality and long-term brand equity over short-term noise.