Launching J2 in the Gulf: Brand, demand and the art of being chosen
I came to the Gulf from a different world. My career was built in consumer and lifestyle, food and travel, the kind of businesses that live or die on whether people feel something and want to come back.
When I took on J2’s expansion into the Middle East, people saw it as a different direction for my career. It’s the opposite. That’s because people choose a space or place the same way they choose anything else: because they feel and keep on feeling something.
That might sound obvious. In this market, right now, it isn’t.
For two decades the Gulf has been defined by extraordinary supply. The story was about scale, how much could be built, how fast, how tall. It was a remarkable thing to watch, and it worked, because demand devoured almost anything that could be delivered. But markets mature, and the question underneath is quietly changing. It is moving from how much can be built to whether people will choose it, live in it, and stay. From infrastructure to belonging. From the trophy address to the place that’s meaningful.
For marketers, that shift is seismic. When supply is scarce and demand is racing, marketing can hide. A glossy launch and a good location will move units, and it’s genuinely hard to tell whether marketing did the work or the market did. When the field gets more competitive, it becomes much clearer. The places that keep selling are the ones with a real reason to be chosen, and the discipline to turn that reason into measurable demand.
This is the part I find most interesting, and where I think our industry has the furthest to travel. Beautiful work that doesn’t sell is the most expensive habit in this business. We have all made it, and clients have all paid for it.
The correction isn’t less creativity. It is creativity that stays accountable, brand and performance built by the same people, judged not on applause but on enquiries, sales and the number of people who choose to stay.
The places that keep selling are the ones with a real reason to be chosen, and the discipline to turn that reason into measurable demand.
Bhav Devlia Managing Partner, J2 MENA
The concept of placemaking is gaining traction here. You hear it in pitches and see it on hoardings. That’s a clear sign the market is asking better questions. But placemaking has to go further than just being an idea. It needs to be deliberate, an identity, a community, a reason to matter that outlasts the launch. It is slow, it is unglamorous in places, but ultimately, it is the difference between a development that sells and a destination that endures.
I would be dishonest if I wrote all of this without acknowledging the moment. I arrived in a market running at full speed, and the period since has been a hard one for many people across the region, in ways that sit a long way beyond marketing. I won’t pretend to speak for it. What I will say is what I have seen: an ambition here that does not flinch. People keep building, keep planning, keep backing what they are making. That tells you something no boom market can. The ambition in this region is not fragile. It is patient, and it is serious.
Which is why I am here for the long term. Markets recover, and the ones shaped thoughtfully through the quieter stretches tend to be the ones that win when confidence returns. The places being planned with care right now, with a genuine reason to be chosen, are the ones we will still be talking about in ten years.
For me, that is the whole opportunity, and the whole craft. Not marketing that makes a place look desirable for a season, but marketing that makes people choose it, and keep choosing it. It is the question every place now has to respond to. And I moved across the world to help answer it.
