SURD: How We Score Angles Before Spending a Dollar

Most brands test angles the same way.

They brainstorm a bunch of ideas. Pick the ones that sound good. Launch them all. See what sticks.

That's not testing. That's hoping with a budget.

The problem isn't that you're testing. It's that you're testing everything. You're spending money to learn that an angle was never going to work in the first place.

Some angles are dead on arrival. You just don't know it yet.

So we built a filter. Four words. One question per word. If an angle doesn't pass all four, we don't test it.

S — Scalability

How big is the potential audience for this angle?

This is about total addressable market. Not everyone who might buy your product. Everyone who this specific message could resonate with.

I was working with a kids' toothpaste brand called Happy Tooth. For three and a half years, they'd been leading with ingredients. Clean ingredients. Safe to swallow. No fluoride. Hydroxyapatite instead.

It was working. But they were hitting a ceiling.

When we ran our first experiment, the winning angle wasn't ingredients. It was exhausted parents fighting their kids to brush their teeth every night. The "battle weary mom."

The founder's first reaction was fear. Switching the entire messaging felt risky. He'd built the brand on ingredients.

But here's what I told him: There's more scale in "bedtime battles" than "clean ingredients."

Why? Because everyone is already talking about ingredients. Every competitor in the space is fighting for the same audience — moms who already care about what's in their kids' toothpaste.

That audience is finite. And it's crowded.

But the exhausted parent? The one who dreads brushing time every single night? That audience is massive. And nobody is talking to them directly.

If an angle is too niche, it doesn't matter how well it converts. You'll hit a ceiling fast. Scalability determines whether you can go from $100K to $500K in spend, or whether you'll saturate at $150K and wonder why nothing's working anymore.

U — Urgency

How much pain is someone in right now?

This isn't about artificial urgency. Not countdown timers. Not "only 3 left in stock." Real urgency. The kind that comes from a problem that's happening tonight.

Ingredients don't have urgency. You can care about clean toothpaste and not do anything about it for six months. There's no forcing function. No moment where you have to act.

But bedtime battles? That's happening tonight. At 7:30 PM. Again.

The mom dealing with that isn't thinking about it abstractly. She's in it. Every single night. 730 times a year.

That's urgency.

When someone is in acute pain, they convert faster. They don't need to be convinced. They need a solution. If your angle taps into something that's happening right now, not something they'll "get around to eventually," your conversion rate goes up.

R — Relatability

How many people instantly recognize themselves in this message?

This is about specificity. Not demographic specificity. Emotional specificity.

"Parents who want clean toothpaste for their kids" is broad. It's also forgettable. Everyone in the category is saying some version of it.

"I'm so tired of fighting my kids to brush their teeth every single night" is specific. A mom who's dealt with that doesn't just understand the message. She feels it.

Relatability increases conversion rate. The more someone sees themselves in the ad, the more likely they are to stop scrolling. The more likely they are to click. The more likely they are to buy.

The goal isn't to speak to everyone. The goal is to speak to someone so specifically that they feel like you made the ad for them.

D — Differentiation

Is anyone else saying this?

If every competitor is leading with the same angle, you're fighting for attention in a crowded room. You might win. But you're paying a premium to do it.

Happy Tooth's competitors were all playing the "clean and safe" game. Fluoride-free. Natural ingredients. Safe to swallow.

None of them were talking to the exhausted parent.

That's differentiation. Not being different for the sake of it. Being different because you found an angle that's true, that resonates, and that nobody else is occupying.

When you find that, you're not competing for attention. You own it.

The Multiplier Effect

Here's how SURD actually works.

Scalability determines your ceiling. How big can this get?

Relatability increases your conversion rate. How well does this land?

Urgency increases your conversion rate further. How motivated are they to act now?

Differentiation multiplies all of it. If you hit the first three but everyone else is saying the same thing, you're still fighting for scraps. But if you hit all four? You're not competing. You're creating.

Before You Test, Score It

I'm not saying you need a spreadsheet. I'm saying you need a filter.

Before you spend a dollar testing an angle, ask:

Is there enough scale here to matter? Is this something people feel urgently? Will they recognize themselves in this message? Is anyone else saying it?

If the answer to any of those is no, you probably shouldn't test it. You already know enough.

The goal isn't to test everything. The goal is to test the things that have a chance.