Haiti’s advertising industry has sparked a lot of controversies within the nation in the past few years for its violations of ethics and disregard for the level of sophistication of its audience in its messages. At the local level, no legislation is set in place to protect this vulnerable population which, for the vast majority, is illiterate. Developed countries have established rules and legislation that protect consumers, particularly vulnerable consumers, from advertising’s potential harm. Little attention has been given to populations in developing countries, such as Haiti, where there is no control or regulation of advertising. In this paper, the author takes a look at the characteristics of the Haitian population and draws on examples from the local press and her direct experience as a professional in the field in order to illustrate the controversy that surrounds advertising in that country. The goal is to highlight the need for local practitioners to work towards industry guidelines that will allow for more responsible advertising in the country. / text

El presente artículo analiza las campañas sociales que se han valido de anuncios falsos (scam ads) con el propósito de ganar premios. Identificaremos si los premios de la industria publicitaria están fomentando una cultura de publicidad social antiética y cómo lo están haciendo. Para ello se realizará un análisis cualitativo de una campaña social reciente ganadora de premios en Cannes Lions que fue identificada como scam ad. El caso es “A Love Song Written By a Murderer” de la agencia Circus GREY (Perú, 2017). Esta campaña será analizada desde el enfoque de la ética. Esto se debe a que consideramos que el scam advertising genera un debate ético sobre la pertinencia de estas prácticas en la industria publicitaria y sus premiaciones en festivales como Cannes Lions a lo largo de los años. En ese sentido, utilizaremos las posturas del utilitarismo ético, la deontología Kantiana, y la ética publicitaria. A su vez, el análisis será complementado con entrevistas a publicistas con experiencia en el campo de la publicidad social. / This paper is focused on analyzing social campaigns that used fake ads (scam ads) with the purpose of winning awards. We will identify if the festival awards of the advertising industry are encouraging a culture of anti-ethic social advertising and how are they doing it. Because of that, we are going to do a qualitative analysis of a recent social campaign that won in Cannes Lions and was identified as a scam ad. The selected campaign is “A Love Song Written By a Murderer” by Circus GREY (Peru, 2017). This campaign will be analyzed from the perspective of ethics. The reason of that is because scam advertising represents a problem that generates an ethic debate about la pertinence of this practices in the advertising industry and it´s festival awards like Cannes Lions. Because of that, we are going to use the ethic utilitarianism, the ethic deontology (specifically Kant´s deontology) and the advertising ethics. In addition, we´re going to complement the analysis by interviewing publicists that are experienced in the field of social advertising. / Trabajo de investigación