Inside Cherryn Dogra’s playbook for marketing commercial destinations

The office worker who stops for coffee before a meeting. The family that discovers a new restaurant on a Sunday afternoon. The startup founder evaluating a potential headquarters. These moments create a dual challenge facing commercial real estate marketers today: how do you create spaces that serve both business tenants and the consumers who populate them?

India's commercial real estate sector is experiencing considerable momentum. As per a report, the market, valued at USD 49.31 billion in 2025, is forecast to reach USD 123.31 billion by 2030, posting a 20.1% CAGR. Through the first nine months of 2025, office absorption remained strong even as residential sales declined. Bengaluru led with 15.1 million square feet leased, with 25% of total activity, while Mumbai and Delhi-NCR contributed 10.6 and 10.2 million square feet respectively.

This growth presents a different marketing proposition than residential real estate, where digital influencers like Bhavesh Kaware have driven engagement through virtual property tours and investment advice. Commercial spaces cannot rely on the aspirational storytelling that works for home buyers. The stakes are different when your audience includes both CFOs evaluating square footage costs and consumers deciding where to spend their weekend.

"Commercial real estate marketing is about creating destinations, not selling assets," says Cherryn Dogra, CMO of Bharti Real Estate. "It's a long-term, evolving process that builds ecosystems and experiences rather than transactions, creating destinations that people want to visit, work, shop, and spend time in, while driving consistent footfall, tenant success, and long-term brand equity."

The shifting gears of commercial marketing

In the early stages of the marketing lifecycle for commercial real estate properties, the focus is purely B2B. It involves educating businesses about location advantages, infrastructure connectivity, and operational efficiencies. This requires one-on-one pitches, detailed business cases, and platforms like LinkedIn where decision-makers evaluate options.

Technology companies currently dominate as the largest occupiers in India's office market, followed by flexible space operators and BFSI firms. Collectively, these three sectors account for 60% of overall leasing. For marketers, this means understanding what drives location decisions across vastly different business models, from multinational banks seeking prestigious addresses to tech startups prioritizing cost efficiency.

This shift is beyond metro cities as well. Nine emerging cities including Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Lucknow, Indore, Nagpur, Coimbatore, and Kochi now command a combined 7 crore square feet of commercial space. These mini metros reportedly offer 25 to 50% cost savings across real estate, talent, and operations, with attrition rates up to 15% lower than established metros. Marketing commercial properties in these locations requires addressing both the cost advantages for businesses and the lifestyle considerations for employees relocating from larger cities.

Dogra comments, “During the product lifecycle, Marketing in CRE keeps shifting gears from educating and awareness building thereby creating aspiration for businesses in a very B2B way and gradually moving on to a strategic navigation around B2B and B2C marketing towards the readiness of the assets.”

The B2B foundation remains, but a B2C strategy becomes essential. This is where the dual audience challenge intensifies.

Dogra explains the balance: retail tenants seek visibility, consumer traction, and brand alignment, while office tenants value address prestige and attractiveness from both employee and employer perspectives. When translated to visitors, these needs become convenience, comfort, and memorable experiences. The storytelling always begins with the tenant but comes alive through the consumer, creating a brand ecosystem where business needs and visitor experiences complement each other.

For Worldmark at Aerocity, Bharti Real Estate's flagship development spanning 17 million square feet, this means marketing a Global Business District not as a collection of buildings but as an integrated environment. The property sits in a location defined by infrastructure, multimodal transit access, and proximity to the international airport. Dogra explains that these practical advantages matter to corporate tenants evaluating employee commutes and client accessibility. But the same location needs to be positioned to consumers as a destination worth traveling to for dining, shopping, or entertainment.

Data-driven digital campaigns to experiential immersion

The media strategy reflects this. While residential real estate increasingly leverages Instagram reels, YouTube walkthroughs, and influencer partnerships to reach individual buyers, commercial properties require a layered approach.

"Our marketing strategy for Worldmark at Aerocity is based on four pillars: experience, innovation, luxury, and sustainability," Dogra notes. The media mix reflects this vision, blending digital with the power of experiential.

“While data-led digital campaigns drive high-intent discovery through SEO, storytelling, and LinkedIn visibility, experiential activations immerse audiences in the brand’s world, transforming spaces into cultural and business hubs.” She continues, “We rely on one-on-one pitches and business social media like LinkedIn while in the B2B stage for Offices and Retail but are expected to shift to a more robust ATL heavy medium towards opening gates of retail.”

These digital touchpoints work for the B2B audience, providing the technical details and business case that inform leasing decisions.

But for retail success and consumer engagement, the approach shifts to experiential activations. Commercial assets accounted for 62% of the Rs 6,500 crore in real estate deals during Q2 2025. This suggests investor confidence in the sector, yet, that confidence translates to returns only if the properties achieve consistent footfall and tenant success.

Bharti Real Estate designs collaborations connecting with audiences from global corporations to urban consumers through curated partnerships in architecture, gastronomy, lifestyle, and design. According to Dogra, the brand also uses traditional media and outdoor advertising to amplify the messaging, though optimised specifically for B2C retail rather than office leasing.

People increasingly seek integrated lifestyles where work, leisure, shopping, and social experiences exist in one space rather than requiring separate destinations. This is driving marketing narratives around holistic ecosystems rather than standalone developments. The focus, according to Dogra, is on authenticity, accessibility, and emotional connection. 

Campaigns are designed to reflect actual interactions with the destination: professionals collaborating over coffee, families spending quality time, visitors discovering new dining and cultural experiences. 

Events play a crucial role in bringing this narrative to life. Bharti Real Estate recently hosted CMOs at Worldmark for a walkthrough and session on the Global Business District vision, curated in partnership with IMA India. Such events create networking opportunities that add value beyond the real estate transaction, and generate content and word-of-mouth that feeds back into digital channels.

Real estate developments take years from conception to completion, requiring marketing strategies that build awareness and preference long before consumers can actually experience the space. This differs fundamentally from consumer packaged goods, where products reach market quickly and campaigns can drive immediate trials.

Dogra believes that marketing is not storytelling or promoting a product or service, but understanding business challenges and finding solutions using various dimensions of marketing to help organisations meet business objectives. This perspective shapes her philosophy for marketing commercial real estate. 

Looking ahead, she notes that artificial intelligence presents opportunities to elevate personalisation from predictive consumer insights to optimising tenant engagement and digital outreach. 

“I see AI as a means to better understand visitor journeys across our destinations like Worldmark, helping us craft experiences that are increasingly responsive, relevant, and human-centered.” The technology could make marketing more intuitive, efficient, and data-driven while freeing creative bandwidth for deeper storytelling.

The commercial real estate sector's growth trajectory suggests these marketing challenges will only intensify. As more cities develop mixed-use properties and compete for both business tenants and consumer attention, in the years ahead, commercial real estate marketing will hinge on one defining skill: creating places that resonate as strongly with a CFO as with a café-goer.