Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman, has been announced as the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity’s Media Person of the Year.
Schmidt, since joining Google in 2001, has helped grow the company from a Silicon Valley start-up to a global leader in technology. “Under Eric’s leadership, Google has truly changed the way people around the world access information on a daily basis,” said Philip Thomas, Cannes Lions CEO.
“He has helped build Google in an astonishingly short period of time into one of the world’s biggest advertising medium and one of the world’s most valuable brands. We are delighted to honour Eric with this award.”
Schmidt said that the award “reflects the hard work of many people at Google working to develop new technologies to help advertisers thrive in the digital world”.
From 2001-2011, Schmidt served as Google’s Chief Executive Officer, overseeing the company’s technical and business strategy alongside founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Under his leadership, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and diversified its product offerings while maintaining a strong culture of innovation.
He will be honoured during the Press, Cyber and Design Lions awards ceremony on the evening of Wednesday June 22 in the Palais des Festivals, Cannes, France.
Previous recipients of the Media Person of the Year Award include, Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook; Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corporation; Sir Anthony O’Reilly, CEO of Independent News & Media; Tsuneo Watanabe, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings; Sumner Redstone, Chairman and CEO of Viacom and Gerald Levin, CEO of AOL Time Warner.
Cannes Lions delegates will have the opportunity to attend the Google seminar on Wednesday June 22 at which Schmidt will be speaking.
