Artikel

1— The Problem
2— Why Dramaturgy?
3— The Model
4— How It Works in Practice
5— Seven Values
6— How to Apply the Mode

1 The Problem

Most companies define their brand values once, built around visual identity, and written for the design team. In some cases, other departments get adjacent tools: a tone-of-voice guide for marketing or a set of technical principles when a strong software architect is involved. But these tools rarely speak to each other. And the further you move from the brand design department, the more the brand vision fades into background noise.

The result is a familiar frustration: cross-departmental projects where one team is using the brand values as a guide and the other isn't. Or where neither team is, and the outcome quietly drifts from the company's vision. The values aren't ignored out of indifference. They're ignored because they don't fit.

A brand value that tells a company to communicate openness makes sense for a campaign. It does not necessarily mean the codebase should be open and therefore vulnerable. The same word carries completely different implications depending on where in the company you're standing.

In theatre, a dramaturg holds the vision of the whole, while everyone else works from their own perspective. The director thinks in structure and arc. The actor thinks in motivation and character. The set designer thinks in space and atmosphere. They are all working on the same production, but each needs a different lens to do their part well. What makes it work is not that everyone thinks the same way, it's that they share a common story underneath.

This is the logic behind the Brand Value Dramaturgy Model. A company is the production. Each department has a distinct role in it, with its own language and its own priorities. The model gives every department its own dramaturgical perspective on the company vision, while keeping everyone anchored to the same core values. The brand stays coherent. The work stays relevant.

3 The model

The model organises brand values into three view perspectives:

Inwards — Business development and operations.
How do the values guide what we build, where we invest, and how we grow?

Outwards — Design, marketing, communications.
How do the values communicate look, sound, and feel to the world?

Technical — Development and execution.
How do the values translate into what we ship and how we build it?

Each view holds four values: one unique value that belongs only to that department, two shared values that overlap with the other views, and one key value shared across all three. This structure does something simple but powerful, it shows departments where they differ and where they converge, without forcing everyone into the same language.

Setting the values is only the first step. Equally important is building a structure that communicates them in a way each department can actually use, which is where the mantras come in.

4 How it works in practice

Here is an example: A project between the Software development team and the HR team, the goal is to create a recruitment development onboarding process. The development team uses the technical View, therefore shares two values with HR, which uses the Inwards View. The common values are one shared TI value and the key value.
The development team shares their unique value, in this example, which is “interoperability,” in an effort to communicate that this project aligns with their existing system. The HR team now knows that the project concept should be interoperable, and can also communicate that their shared TI value “user-friendly” should be the priority in this project.
Now both teams have a shared brief: the development team explains what technical interoperability requires in this specific context; HR explains what user-friendliness looks like for the people going through the onboarding. The values stop being abstract. They become a conversation.

If a project touches all departments, for example, the production of the company's main product, then the 3 shared values will be prioritised as well as the key value. Otherwise, each department sticks to its values while the product phases go through each.

4 Seven values

4 How to apply

Step 2 Making it Tangible

After all values are set, each view group creates sentences that they would use in their everyday work life with the values in them. These sentences can be used as guides, not slogans, but working language that makes each value concrete and actionable. Printed as posters or cards, they serve as a low-friction reminder in the workspace.

Examples of sentences:
"We build our products for interoperability. So that growth never means starting over."

"Openness, for us, means every stakeholder can follow the process. Not every stakeholder can access the code."

"User-friendliness in this project means a new hire can complete onboarding without asking for help."

Step 3 Apply it to projects

At the start of each project, use the relevant values as a framing tool. The goal is not to recite the values, but it's to translate them into project-specific language:
"In this project, interoperability means our new tool needs to connect with the existing HR system from day one."
"Our key value is innovation, which means the technical foundation should be built to accommodate what doesn't exist yet."
"For this campaign, openness means we share process, not product. Here's what that looks like in practice."