O dever de regulação da publicidade por parte do Estado em face da vulnerabilidade infantil

Abstract

Publicity is one of the most powerful marketing tools available for companies. It has the function to persuade consumers to acquire products or services and, as a consequence of free bidding and constant seek for exaggerated profit, may end up utilizing anti-ethical strategies, that trespass social and moral values on the search of their objectives. If used in such way, publicity may assume a perverse character leading consumers to buy products that do not need or even harmful to their health. This becomes even more dangerous when the target audience of such publicity has a lack of comprehension about its intentions, i.e. children. They might be easily deluded by publicity tools and suffer even more as occurrence of exposure to it. Therefore, seeking for social wealth and being responsible for maintaining order, it is the function of laws to regulate such instrument in order to achieve its objectives without offending valuable rights of others. For that, the present thesis aims to provide an historical, judiciary and jurisprudence analysis about the theme Publicity in Brazil and, consequently, gather it along with relevant subjects, in example communication and psychology. Verifying these general aspects, the investigator tries to comprehend the current regulation of publicity tools, establishing its main guidelines and the illegality character maintained by the Consumers’ Defense Code. This thesis analysis deeper the case of publicity directed to children, searching for a vulnerability analysis present in these human beings, not fully consciously developed, and the possible consequences for misuse of the tool. At last, the thesis aims to conclude which are the duties and limits that the State should establish in regulating this market tool concerning children as a target audience.