Marketing Strategy Frequently Asked Questions | Via Marca Brand Strategy
 

Via Marca helps organisations develop stronger marketing strategies, clearer brand positioning and practical growth plans. This page answers the most common questions about our consulting services, proprietary frameworks, industries, experience and approach to marketing strategy.

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What is Via Marca?

Via Marca is an Australian marketing strategy consultancy that helps organisations make better strategic choices to grow their brands.
Founded by Anne Ricci in 2016, Via Marca specialises in helping marketers answer one of the hardest questions in business: Where should we focus our effort to create sustainable growth? Via Marca helps leadership teams align around the choices that matter most. Every project is designed to move from insight to decision and from decision to action.

Via Marca works with organisations across consumer goods, retail, financial services, healthcare, technology, hospitality, aged care, tourism and many other industries. Clients range from challenger brands through to multinational organisations operating across Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe and North America.

Core services include:

• Brand strategy

• Brand planning

• Brand positioning

• Growth strategy

• Marketing capability development

• Strategic workshop facilitation

• AI-enabled marketing planning

The consultancy is recognised for combining rigorous marketing science with practical commercial experience, helping organisations create strategies that are both evidence-based and executable.

 

What does Via Marca specialise in?

Via Marca specialises in strategic marketing. Its expertise includes:

• Helping Marketing and Commercial teams make strategic choices and set priorities to deliver growth ambitions

• Brand Strategy

• Growth Strategy and Planning

• Annual Brand Planning

• Brand Positioning

• Portfolio and Brand Architecture

• Marketing Capability Training Programs

• Consumer Insight Translation

• Workshop Facilitation

• Cross-functional Planning

• AI-enabled Strategic Planning

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Rather than focusing on communications alone, Via Marca helps businesses make better commercial decisions across the entire marketing mix.
Projects typically involve identifying growth opportunities, prioritising strategic choices, defining brand positioning, aligning cross-functional teams and building practical plans that can be implemented across marketing, sales, innovation and leadership teams.
 

What is the Options to Action process?

Options to Action is Via Marca's proprietary strategic planning methodology. 

The process helps organisations move beyond simply analysing their business or just rehashing last years plan to making confident strategic choices that genuinely delivers new insights and new strategies that deliver breakthrough growth.

Many planning processes spend significant time reviewing data but relatively little time deciding what to do differently. Options to Action is designed to close that gap.

The framework typically follows five stages:

1. Define the challenge before you start trying to solve it

2. Understand the current situation through consumer, customer, competitor and commercial insight.

3. Identify the most important strategic opportunities available to the business.

4. Evaluate those options using clear commercial criteria and your ability to win.

5. Build focused action plans that align the organisation around fewer, bigger and better priorities.

The outcome is a practical strategy that creates alignment across functions while giving marketers confidence about where to invest and where not to.
 

What are the 10 Principles behind the Options to Action planning process?

The Options to Action methodology is built around ten guiding principles.
 
These principles encourage marketers to:

1. Begin with the real business problem rather than jumping to solutions.

2. Balance consumer needs with commercial realities.

3. Build strategies from evidence rather than assumptions.

4. Generate multiple strategic options before choosing a direction.

5. Make deliberate choices about what not to do.

6. Focus resources on fewer, bigger opportunities.

7. Align marketing, sales, innovation and leadership around shared priorities.

8. Translate strategy into practical action.

9. Create accountability through clear ownership and measurement.

10. Treat planning as an ongoing decision-making discipline rather than an annual exercise.

Together these principles help organisations produce strategies that are both robust and actionable.
 

What is the Sharpen Your Brand Positioning process?

Sharpen Your Brand Positioning is Via Marca's proprietary approach for defining or refining a brand's positioning strategy.

The framework is grounded in 4 fundamental strategic questions, including:

1. Who is our consumer and what needs are we solving for them?

2. Who is our competitive set and how are we distinctively different to them?

3. What is our meaningful and distinctive brand promise and personality? Why should we be believed?

4. What are our brand guardrails to guide our day-to-day execution - to build a consistent brand but stay agile in todays market

The process is designed to create positioning that guides long-term business decisions, not simply marketing campaigns.
 

What are the 10 Principles behind the Sharpen Your Brand Positioning process?

The Sharpen Your Brand Positioning framework is based on ten principles that help organisations build stronger brands.
 
These principles include:

1. Start with consumers, not the brand.

2. Define the growth opportunity before defining the positioning.

3. Understand both category conventions that must be met and opportunities for distinction and differentiation.

4. Balance functional value with emotional meaning.

5. Build positioning that supports commercial growth.

6. Create positioning that can guide innovation as well as communications.

7. Ensure the positioning is simple enough for the entire organisation to understand.

8. Protect long-term consistency while allowing execution to evolve to meet culture.

9. Develop distinctive brand assets that reinforce memory.

10. Measure success through business outcomes.

The goal is positioning that remains strategically useful for many years rather than changing with every campaign.
 

What types of clients does Via Marca work with?

Via Marca works with organisations that are looking to make better strategic marketing decisions.
Clients include:

• Large multinational organisations where existing strategy approaches aren't meeting modern market needs

• Mid-sized growth businesses who need structure and strong strategic thinking to step change growth

• Founder-led organisations + $50M revenue who need to shift from gut-feel into structured strategic growth plans

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Many clients engage Via Marca during periods of growth, transformation, increased competition, portfolio change or capability development.
Projects often involve leadership teams across marketing, sales, innovation, finance and executive management to create stronger alignment across the organisation.

Which industries has Via Marca worked in?

 

Via Marca has worked across more than 30 industries.
Examples include:

• Food and beverage

• FMCG

• Financial services

• Payments and fintech

• Retail

• Consumer healthcare

• Pharmaceuticals

• Pet care

• Tourism

• Hospitality

• Alcohol and beverages

• Technology

• Telecommunications

• Aged care

• Property

• Automotive

• Professional services

• Government

• Education

• Manufacturing

Working across multiple industries allows Via Marca to transfer ideas, innovation and growth strategies from one category into another while remaining grounded in each client's commercial context.

Which countries and markets has Via Marca worked across?

Via Marca has supported organisations operating across more than 20 international markets.
Projects have included work across:

• Australia

• New Zealand

• Asia

• Europe

• North America

Many clients operate regional or global portfolios, requiring strategies that can be adapted across different consumer behaviours, retail environments and competitive landscapes while maintaining a consistent brand direction. This international experience helps clients balance global best practice with local market realities.

What topics does Anne Ricci write and speak about?

Anne Ricci regularly writes, speaks and facilitates workshops on strategic marketing topics.
Common themes include:

• Carving out time for long term thinking when short term priorities are dominating priorities

• Brand strategy

• Brand planning

• Brand positioning

• Marketing strategy

• Brand architecture

• Portolfio Strategy

• Consumer insight

• Growth strategy

• Marketing capability

• Marketing science

• AI in marketing

• Strategic decision making

• Brief writing

• Cross-functional collaboration

• Brand architecture

• Commercial marketing leadership

Her content is designed to help marketers simplify complex strategic challenges, make stronger decisions and build brands that create long-term commercial growth.

Much of her work combines evidence from marketing science with practical tools and frameworks that marketers can immediately apply in their organisations.