Three axes are enough
Almost every workable taxonomy we have seen reduces to three axes: what the slide is about, who it is for, and what job it does in a deck. Add a fourth axis and adoption drops sharply.
- Subject — product, feature, industry, region.
- Audience — executive, practitioner, procurement, partner.
- Role — problem framing, proof, pricing, architecture, next steps.
Write the rules down in one paragraph
If your tagging guidance does not fit in a single paragraph, nobody will follow it. Keep a short pinned note: which axes exist, who can create new tags, and how often the list is pruned.
Prune on a schedule
Tag lists grow tails. Every quarter, merge near-duplicates ('EMEA' and 'Europe'), delete tags applied to fewer than three slides, and confirm each remaining tag still matches how the business talks about itself.