Alex Yates
Creative Director
May Doan
Account Manager
Quynh Anh Pham
Producer
Viet Ngo
Photographer
Manh Nguyen
Videographer
Background
Three different venues, three distinct identities, all on the shores of Vietnam’s magnificent Ha Long Bay. When the Sailing Club Leisure Group, one of the best-known names in hospitality in southern and central Vietnam, launched their first venture in the north, they decided to go big. Not just one restaurant, but a complex of three situated on different floors of the towering Citadines Marina Ha Long.
On the ground floor is Soul Bowl, a whimsically designed family space featuring beloved dishes from across southeast Asia—from Malaysian to Pinoy to Indonesian—all served, you guessed it, in bowls. Up three floors on the poolside mezzanine is Sandals, which adapts the classic Sailing Club concept of a beach bar with western comfort food to the northern context. And way up on the top, overlooking the bay and limestone karsts from its perch on the 34th floor, is On The Rocks—a vibrant cocktail bar with local takes on global classics, and a craveable tapas menu.
Our challenge was launching these three venues simultaneously, distinguishing them from one another, and connecting both with an audience of locals who aren’t yet accustomed to international food options such as these, and the thousands of cosmopolitan travelers who travel to Ha Long Bay every week.
Our Big Idea
There is no substitute for time in the venue, and so our approach to this project was to invert our normal order of operations—which usually puts campaign design before content creation—and give our team time in the space. In November of 2022, two producers, one account manager, a photographer, a videographer, a drone and a Creative Director spent 8 days in the property, exploring and playing as we shot, and filmed. It was important to us that we not limit ourselves to the confines of a traditional photoshoot, and allowed ourselves to inhabit the space and let it tell us how it wanted to be photographed, and filmed.
This approach would not have been possible without the trust that our partners at Sailing Club placed in us, and their collaborative participation throughout the shooting period. At any given time during these 8 days, some of our team members would be interviewing the chefs and bartenders, our producers and photographer would be staging photoshoots with the natural light, and a drone would be whipping through the air above—flying around the building and through the open penthouse doors.
The results, some of the strongest photography and videography that we have ever done, speak for themselves. The content that we created during these 8 days of combined discovery and creation laid the foundations for the look and feel of these three properties online. Soul Bowl’s inviting red tones, and the comforting sight of tables laden with dishes for the whole family. The clean pastels and natural light of Sandals, which has an unmistakable Margaritaville-meets-Vietnam vibe. And the golden-hour light at On The Rocks, passing through crystal and reflecting off of chrome, and wood.
Working in these distinctive spaces was a pleasure. Creating organic content and ads for them that resonate with the unique audience in and around Ha Long Bay is an ongoing one.
