Brogan Renshaw

Brogan founded Firewire Digital in Newcastle in 2017 after working across SEO, ecommerce, paid media, UX and lead generation.

His background is in research rather than advertising. He holds a Bachelor of Social Science from Western Sydney University and a Master of Policy and Applied Social Research from Macquarie University.

That has shaped the way he approaches search ever since: understand the problem properly, work from evidence, and connect marketing decisions back to what the business is actually trying to achieve.

At Firewire, Brogan stays close to the strategic work. He works directly on complex client engagements, particularly where SEO, paid search, AI search and measurement intersect, and leads the development of the systems and tools the wider team uses to make better decisions.

He is also a co-founder of Edge of Search, the Newcastle-based search conference bringing together practitioners from across Australia and overseas.

Search should make commercial sense

Brogan's view of search has changed considerably since Firewire began.

SEO was once largely about earning visibility in Google. Paid search captured demand around it. Today, customers discover, compare and validate brands across search engines, AI tools, social platforms, communities and other recommendation surfaces.

The channels have become more complicated. The underlying question has not:

Where is the customer making a decision, and what would make them more likely to choose you?

That is increasingly where Brogan spends his time: connecting search behaviour, commercial data and customer intent rather than treating each channel as its own isolated programme.

Building Firewire differently

Firewire was deliberately built without the traditional agency hand-off.

There is no model where senior people appear in the pitch and disappear once the engagement begins.

The strategist making the recommendation stays close to the account. Clients can speak directly with the people doing the work. And the agency stays small enough that senior specialists remain involved rather than sitting several layers above delivery.

Brogan still sees that as one of the most important decisions Firewire has made.

The person explaining the strategy should understand the work well enough to defend it.

Research, systems and AI

A significant part of Brogan's role now sits behind the visible client work.

He leads Firewire's experimentation with AI, automation and internal search intelligence, building systems that help the team analyse accounts, interrogate data, monitor search environments and spend more time on judgement rather than repetitive production.

The objective is not automation for its own sake.

It is to give specialists better information, faster, while keeping the human decision close to the work.