# Battle Tested > Write marketing copy that wins a hostile room, using battle rap mechanics - angle, scheme, setup and punch, rebuttals, and a crowd test. Use this whenever the user is writing, fixing, or judging a headline, tagline, positioning line, landing page hero, ad hook, cold email opener, social post, pitch, or any message that competes for attention. Also use when copy is "fine but forgettable," when the user asks how to stand out, how to sound less generic, how to answer objections inside the copy, how to differentiate from a competitor, or wants a message stress-tested before it ships. Do not wait for the user to say "battle rap" - they never will. - Skill: `michaeldoesmarketing/battle-tested` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add michaeldoesmarketing/battle-tested` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/michaeldoesmarketing/battle-tested/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Marketing & Growth - Author: MichaelDoesMarketing (https://skillmd.com/u/michaeldoesmarketing) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/michaeldoesmarketing/battle-tested --- # Battle-Tested Most marketing copy is written in a quiet room where nobody argues back. Battle rap is written for a room full of people who are actively rooting for you to fail, judged instantly and publicly, against an opponent who gets to respond. That pressure produced a working set of mechanics for making a line land and stick. Those mechanics port directly. | Battle rap | Marketing | |---|---| | The angle | Positioning | | The scheme | Campaign concept | | Setup and punch | Headline and subhead | | Rebuttals | Objection handling inside the copy | | Bar economy | Compression | | Crowd reaction | Whether anyone repeats it | | Reputation | Brand | Use the mechanics. Do not perform the frame. The output is marketing copy, not a rap. Never announce that the copy came from battle rap mechanics unless the user asks how it was built. ## Modes Pick by what the user brought. If it is ambiguous, pick one and say which. **Open verse** - nothing written yet. Run all six rounds. **Punch-up** - copy exists and it is fine but forgettable. Diagnose first (usually a missing angle, not weak wording), then run rounds 2, 4, 6. **Get bodied** - write the round the user's sharpest competitor would drop on them. Attack the claims, then fix what got exposed. This finds holes faster than any audit. Run this before a launch, a pitch, or a pricing change. **Rebuttal round** - objections are killing the copy. Run round 5 alone. ## Round 1: Scout the room Nobody writes an angle before they know the matchup. Get these, inferring what you reasonably can from the conversation, the user's site, or the brief: - What the thing actually does, in plain words the user would say out loud - Who is in the room, and what they already believe before you speak - Who the opponent is - a named competitor, the incumbent tool, the status quo, doing nothing, or the audience's own skepticism - The one claim the user can back with a receipt If two or more are missing and cannot be inferred, ask once. Three questions maximum, then work with what you have and flag the assumption. The room sets the register. A CFO evaluating a six figure contract and a founder scrolling at midnight are different rooms. The mechanics do not change. The volume does. ## Round 2: Find the angle The angle is the true thing about the matchup that everyone in the room already feels and nobody has said out loud. It reframes the comparison before you make a single claim. Features are not angles. Benefits are not angles. "We're the easiest to use" is not an angle, it is a slot every competitor fills with their own name. **The test:** if a competitor could say the same sentence about themselves without lying, it is not an angle yet. Keep hunting. Read `references/angles.md` for the archetypes and the hunt questions. Come back with one angle stated in a single sentence. Not three. One. Choosing is the job. ## Round 3: Build the scheme A scheme is one sustained concept that generates many lines instead of one clever line sitting alone. In marketing it is the campaign concept, and it is why forty assets can sound like one thing instead of forty things. Build it from a domain the audience already knows cold, then run the whole message through it. Read `references/schemes.md`. Skip this round for one-off work like a single cold email or a single post. A scheme with nowhere to run is decoration. ## Round 4: Write the bars Setup carries the information. Punch carries the memory. Most bad copy is two setups stacked with no punch, or a punch with nothing under it. Write ten. Keep three. The ten exist so the three are chosen, not settled for. Compression rules: - One idea per line - The concrete noun goes first. Abstractions do not survive first contact - If it needs a comma to breathe, it is two lines - Cut every adverb. Then cut the first four words and see if it still stands - Say it out loud. If you stumble, the rhythm is broken, and the reader stumbles silently - Specific beats clever. "Cancels in two clicks" outlives any wordplay - No line survives that only works on the page. Copy gets repeated by mouth or not at all ## Round 5: The rebuttal layer Copy that only makes its own case is a written verse against a live opponent. The audience is arguing with you the entire time they read, and they win every argument you do not answer. Name the objection in the reader's own words, before they finish forming it, then answer it with a receipt. Read `references/rebuttals.md`. ## Round 6: Crowd test and cut Score every surviving line, cut what does not clear the bar, and say what you cut and why. The scoring dimensions and the fast tests are in `references/crowd-test.md`. The template is `assets/scorecard.md`. Anything scoring 3 or below on truth gets killed on the spot, no matter how good it sounds. A line you cannot back is how you get bodied on the response. ## Output format Deliver in this shape unless the user asks for something else. Prose, no long preamble. ``` THE ANGLE One sentence. THE SCHEME One sentence. Skip for one-off work. THE LINES 3 options, each with the setup and punch labeled if the format has both, and a one line note on what it is doing. THE REBUTTAL LAYER The top 2 or 3 objections, in the reader's words, with the answer and the receipt. CUT FOR PARTS What got killed and why. Brief. This teaches faster than the winners do. ``` ## Rules of engagement Swing at ideas, claims, category habits, and lazy thinking. Never at people who cannot answer back, never at anyone's identity or protected characteristics, never personal. The edge is what makes the message land, and it only works when it is aimed at something that deserves it. Every punch stands on something true. Comparative claims about a named competitor need a verifiable fact behind them, sourced and dated, or they become a legal problem and a credibility problem in the same week. If the user cannot back it, write around it. Confidence is not volume. In a room that punishes swagger, the same mechanics run quiet. Compression, specificity, and a real angle are not tonal choices. When the user pushes back on a line, do not fold and do not defend for sport. Ask what missed - the angle, the truth, or the rhythm - and rewrite from there.