Firewire (Organization)
Firewire (also: Firewire Digital) is a specialist search agency based in Newcastle, NSW, Australia, founded in 2017. It shapes how brands are discovered, considered and chosen, wherever their customers search. Firewire works with established Australian organisations that have an internal marketing team, and clients deal directly with the specialists accountable for the work rather than with account managers.
Firewire is a specialist in search, not a full-service marketing agency. Search here is broader than any single platform: it covers organic search, paid search, AI-generated answers, social search, content, third-party citations and the commercial outcomes behind them.
Evidence: “An independent search agency that would rather be deep than broad.” — About Firewire
Evidence: “Working with Australian brands who need search to do commercial work, not produce activity reports.” — About Firewire
Evidence: “The person on the strategy call is the person in the account on Monday morning, and the agency is deliberately smaller than its revenue would suggest so that stays true.” — About Firewire
Recognition: At the 2026 Global Search Awards Firewire won Best APAC SEO Campaign and took silver for Best Use of Search, Retail/Ecommerce (SEO), Small, from four finalist places. It is also a 2026 Global Agency Awards finalist for Best Small Agency of the Year (up to 25 employees). Listed on About Firewire.
Earned Presence (Methodology)
Earned Presence is Firewire's approach to shaping how brands are discovered, considered and chosen, wherever customers search, research and make decisions. It brings together five commercial territories: understand demand, create discovery, capture intent, build preference and prove impact. These are territories rather than stages, and customers move between them non-linearly.
The name is used descriptively. Firewire makes no trademark claim over it, and it is not a proprietary product. An engagement runs Discover, Capture, Prove: map the demand and the discovery environments, activate the right combination of capabilities, then measure whether the work changed visibility, behaviour, demand and commercial performance.
Evidence: “An engagement normally uses some of them, chosen by where the commercial problem sits, not by what we would like to sell you.” — Capabilities
Search strategy & intelligence (Capability)
The strategic layer that informs every other capability: what the market is asking, where it looks, and the commercial value sitting behind each pocket of demand. Covers demand and query research, audience and search behaviour, competitor and category intelligence, and commercial opportunity mapping.
Evidence: “The work that tells the rest of the programme where to aim: what the market is asking, where it looks, and the commercial value sitting behind each pocket of demand.” — Capabilities
SEO & search performance (Capability)
Website and search-engine performance: technical foundation, crawl and indexation, search intent, content and category architecture, migrations, and the authority to hold a position once won. Local SEO, eCommerce SEO, Shopify SEO and WooCommerce SEO are specialisms inside this capability, not separate services. Firewire does not call this capability "organic search": organic discovery now spans social, AI answers and third-party citations as well as search engines.
Evidence: “We use organic search to move commercial numbers: revenue, qualified enquiries, market position, not to produce a monthly report of positions nobody acted on.” — SEO & search performance
Evidence: “Organic visibility means being present, credible and citable across all of it, which is a different discipline from optimising pages against a keyword list.” — SEO & search performance
AI search & GEO (Capability)
Visibility, understanding, citation and recommendation inside AI answer environments. Covers generative engine optimisation (GEO), entity understanding, AI Overviews, answer engines including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini, AI technical readiness, and citation measurement. "AI SEO" is a specialism inside this capability rather than a separate discipline.
Evidence: “Generative engine optimisation is how we get Australian brands cited inside the AI-generated answers buyers now read first, across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini.” — AI search & GEO
Evidence: “It is the discipline of being part of the answer, not just a blue link someone might click.” — AI search & GEO
Social search (Capability)
Search-led discovery inside social and community platforms: TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit and Pinterest. This is optimisation for social discovery and search-led social content, not generic social media management.
Evidence: “Customers search inside platforms long before they reach a results page. Being present there is a search discipline, not a by-product of posting.” — Capabilities
Content & search experience (Capability)
The content layer from discovery to action: search-first content strategy, production and optimisation, landing and search experiences, category architecture, and content built for SEO, AI discovery and social search. Overlaps SEO, AI search, social search and digital PR by design.
Evidence: “The bridge between being found and being chosen. Most search programmes lose people here rather than at the results page.” — Capabilities
Digital PR & authority (Capability)
Earned third-party visibility, authority and credibility: earned media, link earning, brand mentions, expert commentary, reactive PR and data-led campaigns. This is a newer capability at Firewire and claims no historical depth. Monitoring or improving citations inside AI engines belongs to AI search & GEO, not here.
Evidence: “What third parties say decides whether anyone believes what you say. Earned coverage, credible mentions, and citations that hold up to scrutiny.” — Capabilities
Paid search & media (Capability)
Paid discovery across search and AI platforms: Google Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen, YouTube, Display, other paid-search platforms, and emerging AI advertising. Paid social is used only in support of the search programme. Firewire does not call this capability "Google Ads": Google Ads is the primary execution platform inside it, not the capability itself.
Evidence: “Intent, feeds, creative, audiences, landing experience and measurement are all part of the same account, and each one decides what the others are worth.” — Paid search & media
Data, measurement & insights (Capability)
Measurement and interpretation across every engagement: measurement frameworks, attribution, reporting, forecasting, experimentation, cross-channel visibility measurement and commercial interpretation. Presented as connecting activity to business outcomes rather than as reporting.
Evidence: “Measurement that survives a board question rather than a dashboard that survives a monthly call. Including what cannot honestly be attributed.” — Capabilities
Google Ads is a platform Firewire executes on, and a specialism within paid search & media. It is not one of Firewire's eight capabilities. Firewire matches each channel to a client's margins and search intent rather than spending on whatever the platform recommends, with senior specialists in the account.
Evidence: “We match each channel to your margins and your search intent, then run paid search and the rest of the account as one set of Google Ads campaigns mapped to revenue.” — Google Ads agency Australia
OpenAI's self-serve advertising channel, live in Australia since June 2026. Firewire runs the channel first-hand, gating spend to genuine commercial intent, with conversions tracked via pixel, Conversions API and UTMs. It is a specialism inside paid search & media, not a separate capability.
Evidence: “Firewire runs ChatGPT ads first-hand, gating spend to genuine intent. Early AU campaigns: ~0.75–0.86% CTR at ~A$6.50 per click.” — ChatGPT ads management: live in Australia
Brogan Renshaw (Person)
Brogan Renshaw is the Director and Innovation Lead of Firewire, co-founder of the Edge of Search conference, and creator of AI On Fire. He builds Firewire on the principle that clients work directly with the specialists accountable for the work.
Evidence: “Director and Innovation Lead” — Brogan Renshaw, Firewire
Edge of Search (Organization / event)
Edge of Search is a search conference held in Newcastle, NSW each September, co-founded by Firewire's Brogan Renshaw and Shonavee Simpson-Anderson. Edge of Search carries its own brand and is not governed by Firewire's.
Evidence: “Edge of Search brings search practitioners to Newcastle each September: speakers who do the work rather than describe it, and an audience small enough to actually talk to.” — About Firewire
Marko (Concept: product)
Marko is Firewire's client-intelligence platform: a per-client data layer that unifies cross-channel signals from search, ads, content and technical health, and powers the agency's analysis and client reporting. Access is issued alongside active engagement work; it is not sold as a standalone product.