FAQ
Straight answers, no pitch.
The questions brands actually ask us before they book a call. If yours isn't here, WhatsApp us on +971 50 458 9622.
About the agency
Digital DirAction is a marketing agency headquartered in Dubai with specialist strength in F&B. We run brand strategy, content production, social media, campaigns, SEO, and performance marketing as one connected system for brands across the UAE and GCC.
Headquartered in Business Bay, Dubai, with production and delivery teams in Boston, Toronto, Lahore, and Lisbon. Our core office hours run Dubai time; our production pipeline is 24/7 across the five cities.
Deep specialism in food and beverage: restaurants, cafes, cloud kitchens, bakeries, dessert concepts, and hotel F&B. We also serve beauty, fashion, real estate, fitness, and professional services.
We decline brands we cannot wholeheartedly stand behind: gambling, adult, politically divisive content, and anyone looking to buy fake engagement or inflate metrics artificially.
Pricing & engagement
Credible monthly retainers for a single-brand engagement start between AED 8,000 and AED 25,000 for always-on content and management, plus media budget on top (typically AED 10,000 to AED 50,000 per month). Multi-brand groups and launch programmes sit higher. Anything under AED 5,000 a month is a freelancer rate, not an agency rate.
Single-restaurant monthly retainers run AED 8,000 to AED 15,000. Multi-location groups sit at AED 20,000 to AED 60,000. New-opening 90-day launch programmes run AED 25,000 to AED 80,000. Cafes sit lower (AED 6,000 to AED 12,000). Media spend is additional.
Yes. Brand identities, website builds, launch campaigns, photo and video shoots, and strategic audits all run as fixed-scope projects. Monthly retainers unlock better unit economics but are not required.
Yes, with one honest caveat: we do not take equity, discount for exposure, or defer invoices. Startup pricing matches the scope you need — leaner scopes cost less, but the quality bar does not drop.
Monthly retainers invoice at the start of the month. Project fees invoice 50% at kick-off and 50% on delivery. Media budgets paid directly to platforms or billed on 7-day terms. We accept bank transfer in AED, USD, and GBP.
How we work
Discovery call within 48 hours of a submitted brief. A fully-live always-on system within two weeks. Campaign production can move faster when the brief is tight and the brand is known.
Yes. Everything we produce for you is yours end-to-end: source files, raw footage, editable project files, final cuts, and the full asset library. We hand over an organised Dropbox or Google Drive at the end of every engagement.
A typical social and content retainer includes strategy, a monthly content calendar, one production day, community management across platforms, delivery-platform updates (for F&B), and a monthly report with next-month recommendations. We tailor the scope on the first call.
Retainers can be paused or cancelled with 30 days written notice. Work agreed for the notice period is completed and billed; nothing after is charged. See our refund policy for the full detail.
Often. We slot in as the production or performance capacity for a brand that already has an in-house marketer or works with a global agency on brand. We share the same tools, respect the same brief, and don't fight for territory.
F&B specialism
F&B specialists understand appetite appeal, delivery-platform economics (Talabat, Deliveroo, Noon Food, Careem), and daypart-aware media buying. We shoot food with a food-first crew, plan content against covers and delivery orders, and buy media on peaks (brunch, dinner, late-night) instead of flat always-on schedules.
Yes — this is often the highest-ROI lever in the first 60 days of a restaurant engagement. We optimise listing hero image, menu structure, bundle pricing, badge strategy, review velocity, and sponsored placement bidding across every major UAE delivery platform.
Yes. The ideal engagement starts 8 to 12 weeks before opening. We handle brand identity, menu design, pre-opening teaser content, soft-launch programme, launch-week PR and influencer, and the critical first 90 days of always-on.
AED 6,000 per month for a single-location cafe on content and community management, scaling with the scope you need. Below that, you're buying someone's part-time attention and the output shows.
In-house. Food photography is a specialist discipline — lighting, timing, plating, and knowing what the camera sees that the human eye doesn't. Our food shooters are embedded in the agency, not freelancers hired per shoot.
Tools, reporting, operations
By the metric that matters to your business, not vanity numbers. For F&B that's covers, delivery orders, and repeat visit rate. For performance campaigns it's cost-per-acquisition and ROAS. For brand work it's aided and unaided awareness measured in surveys we run quarterly. We agree the target before we start.
A monthly PDF report plus a live dashboard. Reports cover what shipped, what performed, what the data says to change next month, and the budget delivered. No vanity screenshots of likes.
Content planning in Notion. Design in Figma. Production in the Adobe Creative Cloud. Scheduling in Later and Meta Business Suite. Delivery platforms in-app. Analytics in GA4, Meta Pixel, and the native platform dashboards. Reports in Looker Studio for clients who want them live.
Yes — Meta, TikTok, Snap, Google, and the delivery platforms (Talabat sponsored, Deliveroo Top Spot). Minimum monthly media spend for managed buying is AED 10,000 so the budget is big enough to optimise against.
Yes. Our team includes native Arabic copywriters and content producers. Many Dubai F&B brands undershoot Arabic content; we treat it as a first-class channel, not an afterthought.