If we were to take a relativist global outlook, the marketing that we do essentially revolves around selling products and services in a hemispheric marketplace where it’s fairly easy to motivate the typical consumer.

There is more than enough wealth to go around for thousands of brands to get snatched up by an enthusiastic consumer who has the deepest pockets in the world. We got it good here.

But what about the majority of the world, which is comprised of much poorer nations?

Marketing in the Third World is a tough job. But marketers there are coming up with unique, innovative and outright exemplary marketing strategies.

Why should I care about non-competing firms pursuing a consumer that can’t afford my clients’ products anyway? Because there is a large stratum of consumers in North America that is so resistant to mainstream brands and is so stingy toward major purchases that marketing to it may mean looking for examples from the Third World.

A growing number of consumers who don’t (or can’t) eagerly translate traditional marketing into purchases – for instance, a percentage of students and the low-income youth underground who are frequently un(der)employed and media-cynical – are many times more affluent than the average Nigerian or Chilean, but their lagging propensity to purchase imposes a need for some creative marketing.

In Brazil, buying a vehicle is extremely price-prohibitive. In response, Brazilians have come to rely on pooling money with other buyers to form a consórcio. A number of buyers pool small payments and at the end of each month a lucky winner is chosen by lottery to use the car for the month. If enough people chip in, two cars may be distributed, one by chance and the other going to the person who contributed the most that month.

What a great idea for a North American automaker when marketing to the student consumer (or first-time buyer). A car for this psychographic is a refuge from parents and pressure; it’s new-found mobility and freedom, as well as the prime catalyst for entering consumer society and growing up.

But purchase, insurance and maintenance of a car are also huge financial strains. As bundled services and payment options have become a commodity among car suppliers, a fearless marketer can take these operations to the next level with a consórcio-type model, and the first to respond to them will be the youth demographic – because it’s new, simple, peer-based and because it makes sense.

Major appliance companies in Mexico offer credit based on home or vehicle titles, not banking records or credit ratings. Cell phones in Latin America are stripped of all non-essential gadgetry to allow the handsets to retail at $25, and mobile customers pay only when they make a call instead of being charged for both receiving and dialing a number, which is standard billing in the U.S.

These types of purchasing incentives are almost ideal for a young consumer who has no financial or credit history but a title to a second-hand car, and for the mobile and connected young adult market that wants to eschew costly cell charges and fixed lines, not to mention their parents who are confounded by their monthly statements.

A mainstay in practically all Third World habitats is the street vendor, hawking individually packaged products: cigarettes, candy, toothpaste, lottery tickets, batteries, etc. Consequently, the Mexican producer of Mentos candies introduced packaging for 11 pieces instead of the 14 sold in the U.S., and display boxes that feature 12 boxes instead of 24, to sell more effectively to both peso-strapped consumers and wholesalers who sell predominantly to small street vendors and newspaper kiosks. In India, the world’s largest market for shampoo, the leaders of the sector all sell single-usage sachets for a few rupees.

The smaller-is-better mentality is easily transmutable to youth and young adults who are constantly bumming smokes off of each other, not wanting to dish out on a whole pack, or their single-usage needs for No-Doz, aspirins, batteries or cleaning products. This already exists in thousands of bar bathrooms: Where else can you buy a single pack of French ticklers, cologne, feminine products and just one mint or antacid?

I recently returned from a trip to Argentina and Uruguay, where economic depression has led many of these unfortunate street beggars to master juggling in order to differentiate themselves and basically market themselves for a successful transaction in a sea of competition. How different this approach is to the typical North American panhandler, whose modus operandi is an outstretched hand and a look of shock when the hand-outs don’t come.

I hope not to make an asinine comparison, but this difference can be analogous to marketing practices here and there, to the rich and to the poor. The poor there work harder, and so do the marketers trying to reach them.

The same applies to youth here in North America, many of whom are increasingly becoming brand atheists and purchase resisters. Every day it gets harder and harder to successfully influence them, while new and differentiating ideas and executions from marketers are slow in coming.

Interestingly, the exception to my beggar analogy comes from our squeegee kids and street buskers, who actually work for their pennies. Youth marketers should do the same.

Max Lenderman is partner and CD at Gearwerx, a youth marketing company based in Montreal. He can be reached at mlenderman@gearwerx.com.