Chris Intae

Marketing 101 @ Google U

The best books, blogs and more from four years studying marketing at Google

By willhoughteling

“I want you to run a direct marketing campaign reaching five million small businesses across emerging markets — you pick the countries. You’ll have a budget of $XM dollars and the campaign needs to have at least a 5x ROI. I’ve scheduled meetings for you tomorrow with creative, print and postal management, and data agencies.”

This was how my first meeting with my first boss on my first day at Google started four years ago. I was a recent college grad without a single marketing course under my belt and had (somehow) just joined Google as an Associate Product Marketing Manager. This two-year rotational program was meant to train hungry recent grads to be effective Google marketers with an onboarding ‘process’ that entailed throwing us in the deep end and trusting that we’d learn to swim, fast.