Socially Powerful opened its Dubai office this September, following expansions into New York and, in an earlier chapter, China. Founded in 2017 by James Hacking and headquartered in London, the agency focuses on creator-led marketing campaigns for global brands and employs roughly 220 people worldwide, with teams in London, New York, and a technology development hub in Skopje, Macedonia. 

James has led the company through several iterations of its own identity, from an influencer marketplace to a brief attempt at being a general social agency, to its current positioning as a creator marketing operation built around proprietary technology.

“Creators are at the heart of everything in the Middle East,” James says. “It’s not like a second thought. We’ve got to be in this market.”

That conviction was reinforced last year when roughly ten enterprise brands, including P&G, Unilever, Estée Lauder, and Audi, reached out within a three-week window asking for creator marketing help in the region. James flew to Dubai in December to assess the opportunity, returning persuaded that local agencies were not meeting the demand and that the only credible way to pursue it was to be there in person.

A Remote Expansion Into the U.S. Produced the Agency’s Governing Lesson

In 2023, Socially Powerful tried to build its U.S. presence by hiring local sales talent on substantial packages and managing them from London. The approach lasted roughly six months before it produced no meaningful results.

“We hired some top salespeople on big salaries and tried to run it from the UK,” James recalls. “There was nobody guiding them, there was no culture of the business, there was nobody instilling what Socially Powerful is about.” A review of one staff member’s email after their departure revealed that they had sent six messages in six months.

The fix required a different kind of commitment. CEO Majid Bahi relocated to New York, and the dynamic changed. Client wins began coming in. “As soon as he went there, everything changed,” James says. “You can shake hands with them, you can be in the room, you can talk rather than being on a video call.” Majid spent 18 months in New York before a senior UK executive, someone with five or six years at the agency, took over the office.

James views his own Dubai relocation as the same logic applied at the founder level. “If the founder is in the country, a brand is going to say, that’s somebody taking this place seriously,” he says. “The person who started the company is here.”

Technology Stands Out in MENA, but Local Knowledge Wins the Business

James believes that agencies operating in the Middle East have not built the capabilities that global brands now expect for creator marketing.

That reading became clearer through demonstrations James has run with potential clients using ARIA, the agency’s AI-powered influencer discovery platform. Instead of organizing creators by preset categories that group audiences with different characteristics (lumping streetwear and luxury together under “fashion,” for instance), ARIA processes queries in natural language. The illustrative scenario James uses in meetings: a brand manager launching a shampoo for curly hair can search directly for mothers aged 35 to 45 in Saudi Arabia with curly hair, across Instagram and TikTok, and the platform returns those specific profiles. “When I show them our technology and the stuff we can do, they are genuinely mind blown,” he says.

Technology alone will not be enough. James is explicit that knowing what works in the UAE versus Saudi Arabia versus Qatar requires people embedded in those markets. “I can sell the vision and get us in front of brands,” he says. “But to actually win stuff, you need people that know the culture.”

He is honest about the credibility challenge that comes with that position. “If I’m in a room with Emiratis, it’s like, ‘Why is this guy here?’” he says. Platform relationships with TikTok, Meta, and YouTube are one route into regional brand contacts, but the work of building trust in an unfamiliar market will take more time than a technology demonstration.

Socially Powerful’s AI Discovery Tool Is Free. The Revenue Comes After.

ARIA is among the offerings the agency is bringing to the region, available as a free tool rather than a paid subscription. The platform analyzes more than 200 million creator profiles through natural language and visual search queries, according to the company.

James’s argument against the subscription model is direct. “The amount of money that brands are spending on influencer tools they don’t use is insane,” he says. A manager at a major consumer goods company, he argues, has a full job apart from influencer sourcing and should not be paying for a seat they rarely occupy.

Releasing ARIA for free also functions as a lead generation tool for the agency. A brand that uses the platform to identify creators still needs a team to build, brief, and execute the campaign. “If you want to make something big actually come together on social media, that’s where you need the minds of Socially Powerful,” James says.

In Dubai, the First Hire Is a Videographer, Not a Sales Director

The Dubai office exists as of September. James’s first planned hire is a videographer to document the build from the beginning, something he says he regrets not doing when the London agency was starting out.

A senior account director will follow within six to eight weeks, someone who can sit in client meetings and handle incoming briefs. Junior hires will ramp up in response to client wins rather than ahead of them. “I don’t want to hire account managers when there’s nothing for them to work on,” he says.

The end-of-2026 targets include mapping and meeting decision-makers at every target brand, building working relationships with regional platform teams at TikTok, Meta, and YouTube, and closing the first clients. The 12-month benchmark is a profitable office with eight to ten staff running campaigns across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar simultaneously. “Every single year we’ve been profitable since we started,” James notes. “In a year’s time, this office needs to be profitable.”

Revenue Target and South America on the Horizon

The Dubai launch is the most public element of Socially Powerful’s 2026 agenda, but two other priorities run alongside it. A company-wide rebrand, expected within two to three months, will update the agency’s positioning and website. For James, the updated identity is intended to reflect the creator marketing and technology framing the agency has adopted, rather than the accumulated service descriptions of its earlier growth phases.

The near-term revenue target is £50 million over the next 12 months, with the U.S. office as the primary driver. Several enterprise-level client wins there are, by James’s account, close. South America is the likely next expansion, within roughly 18 months, applying the same selection logic the agency has used since its earliest years. 

“We want to be where stuff’s happening and where it’s going,” James says. “Our ambitions are huge.”

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