One personality trait you need in great measure as guerrilla marketer is imagination. Nonguerrilla marketers make the mistake of thinking imagination means being the most creative. Even the most expensive advertising agencies can miss this point. It is not how creative and slick you can be that makes the most impact for your message. There are plenty of snazzy ads that don’t work. There are numerous commercials that are entertaining or funny that can’t sell anything. It’s not the most artistic advertisement that makes the difference—it is the one that gets the most response.

Guerrilla Marketing Thought: Very often it is how you frame and solve the problem of getting the attention of the people you want to reach that makes the difference. That takes imagination not art.

Take a lesson from Pulitzer Prize winning photographers. They are not the ones who make the news. They don’t engage in planning the events of history, they are simply present and put the frame around the moment. They zoom in on the right part of the picture to catch the eye. They have the angle that tells the story of the event in the picture. They have timing that clicks their shutter at just the right second. They portray the real, raw, energetic, or joyful emotion that gets a gut reaction from the person looking at the image. The Pulitzer winning photos are often not always the most artistic images, but they are usually the most honest and relevant for the moment. They are in their moment, are you in yours?

You need to be in your moment and ready to position the eyes (and ears) of the people you want to reach in the right way. You can frame how people experience your marketing in ways that may not get the awards and accolades of the advertising industry, but that cut to the heart and get people responding to you.