Dubai has seen its fair share of uncertainty over the past months. And yet, if there is one thing that tends to define life here, it is the way people continue to show up for one another. In moments when things feel slower, quieter or less certain, support becomes more visible — not only in personal gestures, but in the way communities, founders and local businesses come together to create something meaningful.

That spirit has been especially noticeable lately. Across the city, people have been finding ways to stay connected, keep moving and look after the places that make Dubai feel like home. And it isn’t just individuals doing their part. Businesses, too, have been stepping in with initiatives designed to bring people together, support local neighbourhoods and remind everyone that the community here is very much alive.

New Balance is one of the brands leaning into that idea through its Local Legends program. Launched together with Jumeirah Johns Running Club — one of our personal favourites — the brand is supporting not only sports communities, but also cafés and small independent businesses across Dubai.

This might sound slightly unexpected. After all, New Balance is a sports brand. Shouldn’t the focus be only on performance, pace and the fittest people in the room? Not quite.

Because for many people — and, let’s be honest, probably most of us — sport isn’t always about results, medals or chasing personal bests. More often than not, it is about lifestyle. About showing up. About joy, connection and seeing familiar faces. It is about having a reason to leave the house, move your body, meet people and feel part of something.

In a world that is increasingly obsessed with overachievement, that philosophy feels not only refreshing, but deeply appealing. We spoke to Ana Elisa Seixas, Head of Marketing at New Balance Middle East, Africa & India, about why community matters more than ever, and how Local Legends became a way to support both runners and the homegrown businesses that keep Dubai moving.

— What led New Balance to the initiative? Why did you decide to proceed with Local Legends, and why do you think it is important right now?

— One of those early mornings in the office, we were just having a coffee and asking ourselves: how can we show up for the community? What does the community need from us right now?

We soon realised that the running communities were starting up again, people were coming back, and local businesses were navigating a challenging period. We first thought maybe we could do one session somewhere, and then very quickly that became: no, let’s do a whole series and increase the reach of our support.

We decided to ask people to nominate their favourite places. At first we were thinking mainly about F&B, but then we said, let’s not make it just about that. Maybe it is laundry, maybe it is garages, maybe it is other local places that need support.

We had the conversation on a Monday. By Tuesday, Angus, the Co-Founder of JJRC had already created a post. By Wednesday, it was live on Jumeirah Johns’ social media and people were nominating places.

Then when the replies started coming in, we realised we needed a proper way of vetting who we supported. Fortunately, through a previous project with Chef Salam and Bait Maryam, we had built close relationships with their super supportive family, and they also helped us understand which businesses genuinely needed support.

That is how we ended up selecting To the Moon & Back as the first location. We then chose Maiz Tacos, and now we are preparing the next one.

— There is always a fine line between supporting a community and using it for marketing. How do you make sure Local Legends stays on the right side of that line?

— Most marketing teams across the region were told to put everything on hold, but at New Balance, we were very clear about what our next steps should be.

The message was: double down on everything in our plan that is about community.

This is when we show up. This is when we prove that when we say we are here for the community, we actually mean it.

Of course, in the first couple of weeks, safety came first. We put events on hold, like everybody did, and paused our running communities as well. But as soon as it felt safe and the wider environment was moving back into a new normal, we resumed and then added this extra layer of community support.

For us, it really speaks to the core values of the brand. Being at the intersection of sports and culture is central to who we are, and this is what that looks like in practice.

— You mentioned running communities. I know Jumeirah Johns Running Club and Angus very well, even though I usually cycled with them and didn’t run. Why do you think, in general, these running communities, especially in Dubai, have become such powerful platforms for real-world support and connection?

— I have been working with running for years, and I saw the whole boom during COVID.

For a long time, people didn’t have access to the outdoors in the same way, and they also lost a lot of everyday human interaction — offices, universities, normal social life. Running communities offered both: a way to be outside and a way to be with people.

At first, maybe it was a test after COVID. But then it became a lifestyle.

That is what I find really beautiful about the way running communities evolved. They used to be much more about personal bests, performance and competition. Now they have become much more open. You can come and run, or walk fast, or just move at your own pace, and still feel part of something.

At New Balance, we call that the Run Your Way ethos. It is about removing the pressure and understanding everyone has their own goals, it isn’t just about PBs. And I think that has been one of the biggest shifts — not seeing sport only through competition, but through community.

— I am glad you mentioned the Run Your Way campaign because I really love this idea that New Balance is bringing — that you don’t always have to be focused on performance and competition and being faster and running longer. Any pace, any distance is good. I guess you embraced it very well in Dubai with the Surf House activation. So maybe we can talk a bit more about Run Your Way — what is the philosophy behind it, and why do you think it is specifically important to have this right now? Because we have enough pressure. Please — Strava personal records are off the table right now.

— You may have seen what we have done for our newly launched shoe, the Ellipse. If you buy the shoe in store, we are giving a wristband to cover your watch as the whole idea is that you lose track of time. 

So Run Your Way is a little bit more than that, it is an understanding that we are all different.

Some people run because they love racing, timing themselves and getting faster. There is absolutely space for that. But there is also space for people like me, who don’t do it to run a marathon, but because they need to carve out some “me time”, away from the pressures of the day to day as a mother, wife, and manager.

Am I the fastest runner out there? Definitely not. If you are walking fast, you might be going faster than I am running. But I am not doing it for speed.

That is the whole point. For some people, Run Your Way is a walk-your-way. For others, it is run-super-fast-way. For others, it is just about meeting someone, moving your body and talking through your day. There is space for us all and if we can meet for a coffee afterwards, even better.

I love this campaign because it removes gatekeeping. It says: show up as you are. If you want to dress like a super-runner, great. If you want to wear an old Bon Jovi T-shirt and your usual gym shorts, that is fine too.

— I really love what you said about the thing to cover the watch, because I really love this term, naked running, when you run without any gadgets. And I think the cycling community definitely needs it, because we are still very, very, very focused on metrics. I guess we all need to chill. No one is becoming Tadej Pogačar. It sounds incredible.

— Yeah, of course.

— Getting back to the community for a second — of course there is a financial contribution because people are running from one place to another place, and they go to Maiz Tacos or some other place you are supporting. But I guess there is another role, which is visibility and community presence, and that can also help small businesses in the long term.

— A huge one.

Take Maiz Tacos. I had never been there before, and now I am telling everybody about it. I can tell you it was the best scrambled eggs of my life. And that isn’t even what I was expecting from a Mexican place. I met the owner, Luma for an hour and felt like I left with a friend.

That is part of what we want to create. Local Legends isn’t just about the place itself. It is about the people behind it, what they have built in the city, and how difficult it is to build something from scratch and keep it going through a challenging phase.

I used to have my own store as well. I know how difficult it is to manage salaries. And, you know, sometimes you have a dream, but from that into negotiating rentals, to paying salaries, to having to go through tough times.

One thing that really stayed with me was hearing how much it meant for the owner and the staff simply to see a full house. Yes, it was busy but extremely rewarding. There were a hundred of us. And the fact that the community showed up for them meant a lot.

So yes, it isn’t just the financial contribution. It is the visibility, it is the showing up. And I think that is also a big part of why this makes such a big difference.

— Honestly, I once had an idea that we need a map for sport communities — where to go — because we all live in different areas of Dubai, and sometimes you are questioning, if I go in my sporty outfit to this bakery or this coffee place or there for breakfast... Especially, I think, for cyclists, it is a major problem because we look a bit strange. Sometimes people are like, what are you wearing? What is that? So yeah, I really love that you are doing it. It is incredible.

— Yeah, and that is a very good point actually, because one of the things we also said is that we didn’t want to keep it just around Jumeirah. Because that is where Jumeirah Johns normally brings everybody together. So it is kind of the neighbourhood already.

So we wanted to make sure that we would go into other neighbourhoods.

But at the same time, when we said, oh, it is Dubai Hills, we were curious to see how the community would respond in a new neighbourhood? Asking someone to move from their neighbourhood into another area, there is an attrition cost, and not everybody is comfortable.

So when we had 100 people showing up, a few of them told us they had been toying around with the idea of joining Jumeirah Johns, but they never did because it was only at Kite Beach.

But now that it was in their hood, they came to say hi, and they came to support.

And now I am thinking, maybe we need a session at Dubai Hills.

— So what does responsibility look like for a global brand operating in the region, going through uncertainty, beyond traditional campaigns? How are you going through this crisis? What else do you think you should be doing?

— That is a very good point.

There were a lot of different elements that came to our mind.

One was, how do we really show up in ways that are relevant? And I think we have been fortunate, obviously, working with Angus and having Alex in the team who is the Running Business Manager at New Balance. All of us were very much part of different communities, so it was an easy conversation for us to have on that Monday morning.

But then we also wanted to see what else was there that we could support. And I think that is why, at the second level, we decided, okay, maybe it isn’t just about F&B. This is also about other businesses. People were telling us about friends who had just launched skincare brands, or other local businesses that were struggling because of lower footfall.

In some cases, we can’t create the same kind of physical traffic for them that we can through a run, but we can still use our platform to give them visibility.

We also started asking how we can show up differently for people who are still here, still walking into our stores, still building their lives in the UAE.

That led to a couple of initiatives. One was a collaboration with a local charms business, The Charms Atelier, bringing their kiosk into our stores. Another was working with artist Dina Sami on patches and designs celebrating UAE unity which included messages that reflect that sense of belonging like  “We Stand United” and “In the UAE, we’re all Emirati.”

And so also starting from this weekend, we will have that across all our stores. So all we need to do is walk in, buy some apparel, and we will give you the patch and we will apply the patch on your T-shirt so that you can show how proud you are to be here in the UAE.

Is this rocket science? No. But it is small little things that we can implement very quickly, and with the right local artists whom we have been blessed to work with over these years, were able to help us have these in stores with a quick turnaround.

— There are brands who focus on marathons, on races, on being incredibly fast. I think for me, New Balance is all about real life, real people, and real achievements because for someone, average pace — eight minutes per kilometer — is an achievement. And I think right now you have found this amazing niche where you work with local communities, small businesses. Do you think it is going to become a long-term plan, and are you going to continue doing this after this crisis hopefully ends very quickly?

— One hundred percent.

That is also the uniqueness of New Balance: we were already doing this. None of this sits outside our playbook. It isn’t like we suddenly decided to pretend to be part of the community.

This is authentic to New Balance.

That is why the first reaction from leadership was to say: “double down”. You can only double down on something you were already doing.

For me, it comes back to the fact that sports and culture aren’t separate things. Real life doesn’t work like that. People don’t wake up and decide that today they are only an athlete, or only a lifestyle person. We are all of these things at once.

That is what we are trying to reflect. And if we as a brand can help bring people together through that lens, then that is the right thing to do.

It is part of our culture and brand purpose to empower people through sport to create positive change in communities across the region. We have seen the impact and it is definitely something we will continue to do as we expand our footprint across the region and communities. 

Now more than ever, when people really need spaces to come together, we want to help provide them.