Newcastle-based, eight years in. Specialists run the accounts, with no tier-two review layer and no junior handoff after the pitch. The person on the call is the person in the work.
In 2017, the Australian search agency market was structurally broken. Marketing managers paid for senior strategy and got it once, at the pitch. Then the relationship was handed to a junior account manager whose job was to relay messages between client and delivery, neither of whom they were ever in a room with.
Firewire was founded on a single principle: that arrangement was the source of the problem, not the structure for solving it. Clients should talk to the specialist running their account. The person on the call should be the person making the calls in the account. Everything that followed (the hiring, the size, the refusal to scale beyond what the model could carry) flowed from that principle.
Eight years on, the agency is forty per cent smaller than the headcount its revenue would suggest, intentionally. We do not add layers. We do not run a tier-two review process. The work goes through the people doing the work. That is the agency.
The next chapter is AI-native operations, not as a service we sell, but as the way the agency actually runs. Internal tooling, named systems, specific jobs.
Every client works directly with the senior strategist running their account, typically Brogan, Shōnavee or Ashley. The person you meet at the strategy call is the person in the account on Monday morning.
In practice: the strategist who scopes your account on the first call is the one running it week to week. No handoff to a junior once you sign, and a direct line to the person doing the work.
Reporting is framed against revenue impact, not impression counts. Every client gets a live Marko dashboard (our custom in-house reporting) tied to the numbers the business actually runs on, not Google Analytics defaults pulled into a deck.
In practice: Hobbies Direct's reporting reconciles paid + organic against the revenue line. If a tactic doesn't move that number, it doesn't make the brief.
The agency runs on a stack of internal tools and 50+ Claude Code agents. Otto MCP monitors paid accounts daily. Pipeboard reconciles spend against revenue. Marko gives every client a dedicated intelligence layer. Specific systems, specific jobs.
In practice: 51 Claude Code agents are deployed across keyword research, schema validation, content QA and competitor monitoring. Each one is briefed on the client it serves.
Small, senior, direct. No agency hierarchy that gets in the way of work. Decisions are made by the person closest to the account, usually in the same conversation the question comes up in.
In practice: decisions are made in the room by the person closest to the account. There is no tier-two review committee, which is why work ships on a five-day cadence instead of climbing a ladder for approval.
Flat by design. The strategist running your account is the person on every call.
Senior search strategist across the agency's flagship engagements. Sets the keyword-to-revenue map at kickoff, runs the weekly walkthroughs on the larger SEO accounts, and owns the strategic call on bidding architecture across paid. Co-founded Edge of Search and writes most of the AI On Fire issues. Active in the Australian search community since 2011.
View profileLeads how Firewire shows up across the search industry: community, events, partnerships and field marketing. Co-founded and organises Edge of Search, Australia's only dedicated search and AI search conference, which brings the industry together each year and lands the next wave of thinking back into the agency.
View profileRuns content production and editorial direction across every client. Rebuilds key landing pages for citation in AI engines, briefs the long-tail SEO content engine, and reviews every piece that leaves the agency with a Firewire byline. The recent Ampcontrol content restructure for GEO citation was Ashley's work end-to-end.
View profileNewest specialist on the team. Running on-page SEO ship cycles, schema implementation, citation tracking across AI engines and weekly QA across active accounts, working across the SEO and paid programmes while developing her own client portfolio.
View profile
Runs billing, invoicing and the financial admin that keeps client engagements running smoothly behind the scenes.
The connective layer between clients and the specialists running their work, keeping engagements on track and relationships strong across the portfolio.
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Runs Firewire's social presence: planning, producing and shipping social content across channels, and keeping the agency's voice consistent everywhere it shows up.
View profileWe don't just work in search. We host it, sponsor it and show up for it. From our own Edge of Search conference to Newy SEO Beers, Search Central Live, brightonSEO and WTSFest, the team is part of the community we serve.
You'll find us at Edge of Search Search Central Live brightonSEO WTSFest Newy SEO Beers
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Sydney We use AI the way other agencies use Notion. Internal tooling, named systems, specific jobs. The point isn't "we use AI." The point is that the agency operates as a connected system, which is why senior-level work doesn't break at our scale.
Firewire's internal client intelligence platform. Every client gets a dedicated data layer (cross-channel signals from search, ads, content and technical health) feeding into how the team works on their account. Not a dashboard. Not a reporting tool. The connective tissue of the agency.
Specialised agents running across keyword research, content QA, technical SEO analysis, conversion rate review and reporting. Each one trained on Firewire methodology and briefed on the client context it serves. New agents ship roughly weekly.
We do senior-level work at scale because the system carries the load account managers would carry at a bigger agency. Senior specialists stay free for the work that actually requires them: strategy, judgement, the calls that move revenue.
We use the right mix of strategy, search, AI, no-code, and engineering based on what needs to ship.
See our processThree things sit alongside the client work: the conference that brings the Australian search community together, the meetup we host on home turf, and the weekly publication that surfaces the thinking before it lands in client engagements.
Co-founded by Brogan and Shōnavee. Speakers from Ahrefs, Adobe, DEJAN Marketing and the working search community. Where Firewire surfaces what we're actually shipping, and where the wider industry meets in person.
edgeofsearch.com.auWritten by Brogan and the Firewire team. The thinking that shows up in client engagements lands here first, and goes out to several thousand Australian search marketers every Friday morning.
Firewire hosts and sponsors Newy SEO Beers, an informal night for Newcastle's search and marketing crowd to swap what's actually working. No talks, no pitches, just the local industry in one room.
Hear about the next Newy SEO Beers and future Firewire events.
A remote-first team rooted in Newcastle, NSW. Senior specialists run accounts for brands across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Poland and the US.
30 minutes with a senior strategist. We'll diagnose where revenue is being left on the table across your SEO, Google Ads and GEO surface, and tell you honestly whether we're the right partner to recover it.
