The Heart of Tomorrow is Al-Futtaim’s first-ever Group-wide employer brand, with no models, no scripts, just its own people across Dubai, Riyadh and Singapore.
How do you build one employer brand for 40,000 people across 100+ nationalities, dozens of professions and 90 years of history? Al-Futtaim’s answer: stop trying to smooth out the differences, and let them be the story.
The Heart of Tomorrow, developed with employer-brand specialist McCann Synergy, is the Group’s first-ever single, Group-wide employee value proposition, not a recruitment push, but a framework meant to shape how HR builds policy, how leaders lead, and what every employee can expect from day one.
The build was owned internally by HR and Group Corporate Communications, led by Marie Eaton (Head of Talent Management), Nina Kromann (Global Head of Employee Communication) and Olivier Bockenmeyer (Global Head of Brand). It started with listening: employee engagement data, external reviews, focus groups, leadership interviews and competitor benchmarking — all in search of one non-negotiable: the brand couldn’t sell employees a version of Al-Futtaim they wouldn’t recognize.
That’s why there isn’t a single professional model in the campaign. Every face and voice, shot across more than 15 locations in Dubai, Riyadh and Singapore, from automotive showrooms to healthcare clinics, belongs to an actual Al-Futtaim employee, cast not through selection but volunteering.
Kromann told Communicate: “We wanted The Heart of Tomorrow to capture the true spirit of Al-Futtaim as our people tell it, rather than a version written for them. Every face and every voice belongs to someone who works here. It’s a promise to our own 40,000 people first, and to the future talent who’ll one day call Al-Futtaim home.”
The platform launched globally on September 9 with internal comms and a paid social push across TikTok, Facebook and Instagram — and it’s built to run, not just launch. Recruitment touchpoints, careers channels and employee storytelling roll out next, market by market. It stays deliberately in its lane too: aligned with Al-Futtaim’s consumer brand, but used strictly for employer branding, not a crossover play.
For CMOs watching the employer-brand-as-brand-platform trend accelerate across the GCC, it’s a case study in scale without homogenization: one idea, endlessly local.
