Death to All Sacred Cows: How Successful Businesses Put the Old Rules Out to Pasture

Written by the owners of advertising agency The Gate Worldwide, this book aims to take the sacred cows of business out to pasture, showing how adages like “always trust your research,” “success breeds success” and “the customer is always right,” are not only old and tired but may lead a business completely astray. At first the book’s quirky, humorous style is a welcome change from drier business books, but after a while this chattiness starts to distract from the advice, which tends to be old itself, less than cutting edge. For instance, the Super Bowl XXIX Budweiser campaign in which frogs croaked out the company name was clever, but is now 12 years old; likewise, one discussion of Nike harks back to the Michael Jordan era. The authors may be experts in their field, but this book leaves the reader asking, “Where’s the beef?” (Mar. )