Interview with Obi Felton, Google

What’s your golden rule?
Try new things all the time, move fast, learn from your mistakes. In marketing you might call this testing, in engineering launch & iterate. I much prefer getting something out quickly and less perfectly and see how people react to it, rather than spend months polishing a campaign. This is one of the reasons I like Google, we do new stuff on crazy timelines all the time. Some things fail, some take off – this is true of our products and our marketing projects.

Who has been your biggest influence?
Professionally, my boss at eToys, the startup I worked at during the first dotcom boom from 1999-2001. Personally, my husband and my yoga teacher.

What is your most hated business expression?
We can’t do that because…

What’s the smartest business idea you’ve ever had?
Doing a big marketing campaign for Chrome to drive awareness of browsers and Chrome adoption in EMEA. Google had never done marketing on this scale, it worked, and we’re now doing bigger and bolder campaigns around the globe.

Which leader do you admire most and why?
No one person in particular, there are so many people to learn from. I heard Bob Geldof speak recently and was impressed with his passionate and intelligent plea to make a difference to the world. We also have some pretty amazing leaders at Google, like Eric Schmidt and Nikesh Arora. They have long-term vision, a focus on the user and are very accessible, not executives on a plinth that nobody gets to talk to.

What’s your favourite word?
Magical.

Tell us a secret.
I grew up in Berlin, but have lived in the UK for exactly half my life. Am I German or English now? I suppose I’m a Londoner.

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