About

I started as a designer. That turned out to be an advantage.

Most digital leaders come up through strategy, product, or engineering. I came up through design and production: hands-on, delivery-focused, working directly with clients from day one. Over ten years that expanded into front-end development, project delivery, vendor management, AI automation, and eventually running the entire digital function at an enterprise level.

That breadth is the point. When a business hires me, they're not getting a strategist who hands off to someone else. They're getting someone who can read a codebase, brief an agency, run a tender process, build an automation pipeline, and present to a board, and who knows which of those is needed right now.

Both sides of the table

Most of my career was agency-side. Three years leading digital production at Bright Labs, where the team scaled from 3 to 15 across 20+ concurrent projects and Craft CMS was introduced as the agency's core platform. Earlier agency work delivered for clients across property, legal, FMCG, education, and professional services. In 2024 I moved client-side as Head of Digital at a large residential homebuilder, where I led a full platform re-platforming: running a $250K+ formal tender, appointing the agency, and owning delivery from brief to launch. The result was $250K in recovered vendor spend in year one and a 75% conversion rate uplift post-launch.

That experience, knowing what agencies say versus what they mean, and what clients need versus what they ask for, is the core of what I bring to every engagement.

Generalist by design

The mid-market digital problem is rarely one specialist's job. Most engagements span design, technical SEO, conversion analysis, vendor management, integration scoping, and stakeholder communication, often in the same week. A specialist team can do this, but the coordination overhead alone is half the cost. One generalist with the breadth to spot what matters and the depth to act on it is the cleaner trade.

That's the offer. One operator across the whole digital function. No team to manage on your side. No agency politics on mine.

What I've built

• End-to-end digital platform re-platforming for a large residential homebuilder
• AI and automation pipelines that cut 80% of manual production work
• Production teams scaled from 3 to 15 across 20+ concurrent projects
• Formal vendor tender processes, agency selection, and long-term relationship management
• Independent website projects for businesses across Australia

Why I work this way

Mid-market businesses are consistently underserved. They're too big to wing it and too small to justify a full-time Head of Digital. They end up either overpaying agencies they can't manage, or going without the strategic oversight that would make their digital investment actually pay off.

That's the gap I work in. Anthony Keal is the consulting brand. Keal Collective is the company that sits behind it: the delivery practice that runs the website builds and ongoing maintenance work that grows out of consulting engagements. When you engage Anthony Keal, you're working directly with me.

Anthony Keal Melbourne, Australia. Working with clients across the country.