Don't Buy What I'm Selling

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Part memoir, part manifesto, this is the "fascinating, smart, and hilarious look" (Christie Tate) of a woman determined to go deep inside advertising so she could save the world—and herself. What could possibly go wrong? As a high-level advertising creative director for 14 years, Lu Chekowsky willed inanimate objects to life and made people want to buy stuff they didn’t need. Her colleagues called her “Mary Manifesto” because she could whip up an emotional ad campaign like no one else. Need someone to channel Michael Jordan so people will line up and buy his latest sneaker? That’s Lu. Need to convince a cranky teen heartthrob to take his shirt off for an ad designed to get teenage girls across America to swoon? That’s her too. It was a regular workday when she made same-day cross-country trips between New York and LA to satisfy the CEOs who counted on her to pump up their profits—ignoring her own voice and using