Director - Marketing (Retail)

Role overview

Strategy and portfolio marketing

• Develop portfolio strategy and differentiated annual marketing plans for each asset, reflecting catchment, customer segments, tenant mix, competition, and asset maturity.
• Use consumer insights and market research to increase visitation, strengthen destination appeal, and support tenant trading and leasing objectives.
• Translate priorities into delivery plans, investment recommendations, measurable objectives, marketing policies, processes, and brand governance.
• Oversee marketing plans, events, sponsorships, partnerships, and annual retail and residential marketing calendars in coordination with other departments.
• Lead customer experiences that increase visitation, dwell time, and repeat visits; oversee event quality, branding, and operational readiness.
• Build tenant engagement programs for openings, promotions, and joint campaigns, and assess event and partnership performance.

Campaigns and agency management

• Guide integrated marketing campaigns across channels, review brand-compliant collateral, and evaluate post-campaign performance against objectives.
• Define agency and supplier scopes, deliverables, and standards; lead selection and commercial negotiations with Procurement.
• Manage agencies against approved budgets, timelines, service levels, creative standards, and value-for-money expectations.

Collaboration and reporting

• Align campaigns, content, media relations, destination announcements, and customer communications with communications, PR, digital, and branding teams.
• Partner with Leasing, Asset Management, and Operations to align initiatives with tenant needs, business priorities, and customer experience.
• Coordinate event approvals with Legal, Security, HSE, Facilities Management, and relevant authorities.
• Present consolidated performance reports covering footfall, campaigns, brand visibility, digital performance, events, and partnerships.

Budget and continuous improvement

• Own annual marketing budgets across the portfolio and manage expenditure, commitments, forecasts, variances, financial controls, and approval limits.
• Agree return-on-marketing-investment measures with the VP, optimize channel spend and costs, and recommend evidence-based reallocations.
• Monitor competitors, marketing technology, customer feedback, and analytics to improve market positioning, channels, and customer experience.

People management

• Lead a marketing team of approximately 15 employees, setting objectives, responsibilities, and performance expectations.
• Allocate resources, coach team members, provide feedback, manage appraisals and development, and plan succession.
• Build a collaborative culture focused on creative thinking, financial discipline, timely delivery, motivation, and retention.

Minimum qualifications and experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business Management or Administration, or a related discipline.
• A relevant master’s degree or MBA is preferred.
• At least 10 years of relevant marketing experience, including at least five years in a senior marketing leadership position.
• Proven shopping mall, retail real estate, or lifestyle destination expertise and experience marketing multiple retail assets.
• Demonstrated accountability for substantial budgets, integrated campaigns, major events, partnerships, and measurable commercial outcomes.
• Experience with a major mall operator, retail property group, or destination business is preferred; UAE and GCC retail knowledge is an advantage.

Technical competencies and languages

• Expertise in retail and destination marketing, catchment analysis, consumer behavior, and tenant engagement.
• Skills in portfolio positioning, annual planning, launch and repositioning marketing, budgets, forecasting, and return-on-investment analysis.
• Experience with integrated campaigns, media planning, events, activations, sponsorships, and partnership negotiations.
• Digital marketing, social media, CRM, and analytics knowledge sufficient to brief and evaluate specialist functions.
• Practical knowledge of AI-enabled marketing tools, automation, and predictive analytics is specified.
• Agency management, procurement, project delivery, and executive performance reporting are technical competencies.
• Excellent written and spoken English is required; Arabic is an advantage.

Behavioral competencies

• Strategic thinking, commercial judgment, customer focus, and results orientation.
• Leadership, coaching, empowerment, collaboration, and relationship building.
• Creativity, curiosity, accountability, and financial discipline.
• Negotiation, clear communication, planning, prioritization, timely delivery, adaptability, and decision-making under pressure.