Don't Buy What I'm Selling.

(Unless it's this newsletter, of course.)

Thanks for being here.

Hi! I’m Lu Chekowsky, a former advertising creative director who’s held jobs in media at places like Conde Nast, Wieden+Kennedy (the ad agency for Nike), MTV, Comedy Central and Facebook and who’s now writing a memoir (forthcoming from Little, Brown in 2026), about the influence advertising’s had over my life, both as consumer and as someone who worked deep inside the advertising machine.

If you’re curious about what you’ll be in for if you stick around, you can check out a thing I wrote about the intersection of zit medicine and gun violence for AdAge and a thing I wrote about the passing of my advertising mentor, Dan Wieden – the guy who wrote the tagline, “Just Do It.”

Some more about me (or: Why I Can’t Tell the Story of My Life Without Advertising).

I grew up in a house in the 1980’s where the TV was never off. I didn’t just watch ads, I studied them. Taglines became mantras and mascots, my friends. My cells are built from the genetic material of the Energizer Bunny and the Time to Make the Donuts guy. Every day, I prayed the Kool Aid Man would burst through the wall and serve me an ice-cold glass of himself. At first, I developed a crush on the Brawny lumberjack, but then I turned my attention to the Marlboro Man. I hoped we’d get married and have a Pillsbury Dough Boy. I was a good girl; I never squeezed the Charmin. I was always trying to Think Different and Just Do It. There’s really no way to know which came first in my advertising story, Colonel Sanders or the Incredible, Edible Egg. Advertising told me who I needed to be and then I grew up to make advertising that told everyone who they needed to be. I guess we really are what we eat.

Now, I’m working on writing a book to try and untangle the chokehold advertising has had over my life; from the gasoline that fueled the anxieties of my childhood the minute I discovered I could, in fact, “Pinch (far more) More Than an Inch,” to the nearly twenty-year career I spent manufacturing media that left a new generation of girls to question the value of their bodies. I am excited to be in this conversation with you, and to help connect with other people who looking for a way around (or through) the onslaught of influence we’re living in.

Don’t Buy What I’m Selling will explore things like:

• The impact advertising has on how we see the world, spend our money, and decide our value.

• How companies pay millions of dollars to breathe life into inanimate products so they can come across like real human beings with personalities and emotions.

• Influencer culture (ie: how to discern if the person, speaking straight to camera with a ring light is your friend or if they want you to buy something?)

• Classic ads that gifted us some real bullshit ideas we have held onto our whole lives. (See Above: Special K’s “Pinch More Than an Inch” Campaign.”)

• Creepy Instagram ads that seem to know exactly what you need, right when you need it.

• How aspiration – the main ingredient every ad has – fools us into believing there’s always a better future available to us (but only after we buy all the right things, in the right order).

• You also might get an update or two about the process of writing a book, which, I’m still learning about as I write it.

Whenever I can, I’ll share what I know about how the toxic sausage of advertising gets made to help arm people with more power to dodge the onslaught of ads getting hurled in their direction every day. I’ll try to be funny (it helps to keep from crying?) while pulling back the curtain on the Great and Powerful Advertising Oz.

What will I get if I subscribe to Don’t Buy What I’m Selling?

• You’ll get no more than two posts a month (probably less), free. I’m not planning to monetize this newsletter just yet, because how silly would it be to ask for money to support a site that, in the title, TELLS YOU NOT TO BUY IT? This might change in the future, but for now, this is what it is.

• Links to topical stories about WTF new, ridiculous trick advertising has come up with and I’ll frame up these hellscape tactics with my own hot takes.

• I’ll breakdown new ads and outline of the secret levers they’re pulling that make them work.

• We’ll talk about ads that haunt you in your dreams (and on your Instagram feeds) and I’ll perform an advertising exorcism that can help free you from the belief you need to buy flat belly tea.

What won’t I get if I subscribe to Don’t Buy What I’m Selling?

• This is not a burn book about the people who work in advertising. Look, we’re all trying to survive out here, and when it seems like everything about our world ladders back to advertising, it’s hard to not be a part of it in some way — either making it or consuming it. Some of the best, most caring and hilarious and genius people I ever met in the ad business are my closest friends. I may offer up some sharp takes, but none of them will be pointed at the people, just the systems.

• You also won’t get definitive answers about what “to do” about all this icky capitalism. You will get community and commiseration with me and others like me – people who find the whole thing of brands trying to get us to feel and do things by spending millions of dollars, honestly, pretty desperate.

• You also won’t get a guru who has it all figured out. Look, buying new stuff can feel nice and, if I’m being honest, I still do believe that a $300 face cream might make me look like Bella Hadid.

Above all, if you subscribe to Don’t Buy What I’m Selling, you’ll be getting a newsletter about the wholeness possible without purchase, written by someone whose job it was to make sure you never felt full.

Hey, I’m really glad you’re here. Trying to be alive inside the advertising, robot-overlord machine is hard, and since it looks like we’re stuck here for the time-being, we might as while spend some time laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing is with other people who who see through it (or are trying hard to). I look forward to demystifying, deconstructing and deprogramming with you all.

Have it Your Way,
Lu

Here is an actual photo of me right now in a barn, on a mountain, in the Adirondacks in the year 2024, sans makeup and blowout — which, is the literal opposite of me, nine years ago, back when I was getting ready to attendTHE ROAST OF JUSTIN BIEBER on Comedy Central (see below), after working on the launch campaign for the show for months. This is an example of the advertising tactic of using a “BEFORE” and “AFTER” to illustrate the impact of a product (or in this case, the lack of one) on a person.

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