Strategically located at the crossroads of trade and commerce between East and West, Dubai, the city-state (one of the seven sheikdoms within United Arab Emirates), is an ideal gateway to access markets that span the Middle East, North and South Africa, the Indian Subcontinent and the CIS. Today, Dubai has transitioned from a limited oil-resource based economy to an investment-driven economy. Leveraging its strategic location, Dubai has developed a world-class infrastructure, air connections and port facilities, making it the best-connected city in the region.

One could say that Dubai is a twenty-four billion dollar brand (if we were to take only the GDP for year 2004 as a valuation yardstick). "Excitement " is the underlying brand personality factor, connoting daring, spirited and competitive.

All enduring, influential brands, in their pursuit of greatness, periodically do a brand assessment and make mid-course corrections with a view to achieve their strategic brand intent. This objective assessment must always be an honest and frank exercise to achieve useful results.

All brands whether products, services, or even cities can be metaphorically compared to an iceberg. Structurally any iceberg has two facets, a visible facet above water and an invisible, larger facet below water. The visible facets of a brand iceberg would be its name, logo, advertising, communications, etc. The invisible aspects considered as critical would encompass quality, production, R&D, service levels, supply chain and so on.

Without doubt, the visible aspects of Brand Dubai are remarkable and have been painstakingly built over the years. An enviable brand image as a trading and shopping hub, brilliant infrastructure planning, excellent quality of life, multi-cultural workforce, world-class shopping malls, clusters built around real estate, trade and tourism are but a few of the visible aspects of the Brand Dubai iceberg.

Yet, the true measure of enduring brands is often the less visible aspect of the brand iceberg. It is often said and rightfully so that while visible aspects are easily replicated by competing brands, the invisible aspects of a brand are primarily responsible for a brand's enduring competitive advantage. These intangible qualities transform a brand to stratospheric heights of esteem and reputation.

A quick assessment of Brand Dubai reveals that its intangibles need to be developed in quick earnest if it is to make a definitive transition to an innovation-based city brand.

Let's briefly discuss a few important intangible brand assets that Dubai needs to develop in its journey toward being a dynamic yet caring city brand.

1. Creating Systems, Processes and Institutions:
   It is axiomatic that excellent systems, processes and institutions must co-exist if not precede infrastructure development. Dubai has world-class infrastructure, but does it have world-class systems, processes and institutions? Businesses in Dubai must adopt internationally accepted systems and processes across all functional areas. Ad-hoc decision-making aimed at short-term returns must be replaced by a facts and figures approach; short-term business opportunism must be substituted by long-term strategic planning in all spheres of business life. Very few homegrown private business entities in Dubai can replicate their business model on a global scale. Why? Surely, replicating one's business model on a global level is the true hallmark of success.
   
   
2. Developing Human Resource Management:
   Dubai's peer city brand Singapore, which it often seeks to emulate, has an enviable track record in Human Resource Management across all business fronts. It boasts a merit-based economy where meritocracy is the only passport for employment. Needless to say, most professional businesses in Singapore support equal opportunities employment and rise above shallow considerations as color, creed or nationality. Human Resource Management must be given its due importance in Dubai's march forward as a global city-brand seeking to accentuate its knowledge dimension.
   
   
3. Fortifying the Educational Backbone:
   Knowledge Village, an education cluster, was set up to develop Dubai into a destination for education for both regional and international learners. This new education and training hub also complements the Free Zone's other two clusters: Dubai Internet City and Dubai Media City by providing the facilities to train the clusters' future knowledge workers. Certainly, Knowledge Village followed by Academic City are yeoman efforts to transform a traditionally "seller's educational market" to a "buyer's educational market," where for the first time students have an array of educational course offerings to choose from. But, the underside of this mushrooming of these off-site educational establishments is the sub-optimal manner in which many of these "teaching shops" are managed. Ad-hoc hiring and firing practices of employees, underpaid faculty, below-par library facilities and sub-optimal delivery of educational offerings to high-paying students are a few such prevailing practices. The authorities must strictly deal with these errant management bodies before they undermine the infant educational edifice.
   
   
4. Streamlining the Labor Market:
   Only the other day a senior official made a long overdue, yet pertinent, comment in a city newspaper that there are many reported instances of default on basic labor practice standards. In this era where respect for human dignity is paramount to anything else, such aberrations must be quickly corrected. Many a responsible global brand like Nike or Gap acknowledged their mistakes of producing low-cost goods in sweatshops and re-invented their supply-chain strategy. Customers have forgiven these brands for acknowledging their mistakes and making sincere efforts to correct them. In building tomorrow's Dubai, unskilled and underprivileged workers must be treated with due respect and compensated adequately. That is the true measure of greatness as a caring and responsive city brand.

Doing a self-critical brand assessment and making sincere efforts to correct anomalies have been the driving force of all great and enduring brands in history. It is extremely important that all the touch-points of Brand Dubai live up to its brand promise. Dubai is still a young brand but as an emerging global city-brand it must also focus on building its critical intangible brand assets and make the world applaud Dubai as an "exciting and caring" city brand.

Sunil Varughese is brand strategy director at Brand Indigo LLC, a Dubai-based brand consultancy firm specializing in brand building across market sectors.