On November 19, 2007, the Guatemalan women's shoe company MD launched a series of advertisements in Tegucigalpa. The first ad featured a woman's legs protruding from under a sheet on a coroner's table, her feet clad in bright open-toed heels, a coroner's tag tied to her toe. The second featured a dead woman splayed across a couch, her head and her limp arms dangling out of focus in the background. Across each ad was printed the slogan, 'Nueva colección: Está de muerte' ('New collection: It's to die for.').

During the march to commemorate International Day of Eradication of Violence Against Women on November 26, 2007, activists announced a two-pronged strategy: to persuade MD to retract the campaign through legal routes, and, failing that, to join with other Central American women's organisations to boycott MD products. They received solidarity messages from women's networks across Latin America and Spain, and wide support from diverse sectors of the Guatemalan population.

The advertising campaign lasted only 13 days. Initially, the advertising firm released a statement indicating that their ads' intentions were in no way to suggest violence against women or to defend femicide, but rather to play on the colloquial phrase 'to die for'. Ultimately, following a written apology in El Periódico, MD pulled the ads, with deepest apologies to all those offended.