Twenty-five-year-old Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is to receive the Media Person of the Year Award at the 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
According to the organisers of the festival, the award is presented each year “to a prominent personality who is an influential figure in the development of today’s media landscape, ultimately playing an integral part in shaping the future of the advertising industry”.
Previous recipients include Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corporation; Sir Anthony O’Reilly, CEO of Independent News & Media; Gerald Levin, CEO of AOL Time Warner; Lachlan Murdoch, deputy chief operating officer of News Corporation; Jean-Claude Decaux, president of JCDecaux Group; and Silvio Berlusconi, media magnate and Prime Minister of Italy.
Zuckerberg founded Facebook, which now has more than 400 million active users, in 2004, while he was studying computer science at Harvard University. As CEO, he is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. He leads the design of Facebook’s service and development of its core technology and infrastructure.
About the Cannes Lions Media Person of the Year award
“Cannes Lions Media Person of the Year is awarded to those who have changed the face of media and communications, usually after a lifetime of achievement,” said Philip Thomas, Cannes Lions CEO. “For Mark Zuckerberg to have created one of the internet’s most dominant businesses so quickly, and to have had such a global impact on the way we all communicate with each other, is quite simply astonishing. We are delighted to honour him with this award.”
“We are still in the early stages of our mission to build things that make the world more open and connected, so I feel honoured and humbled to receive this award in recognition of what we’ve accomplished so far,” said Zuckerberg. “We will continue to innovate and push technical boundaries to create better ways for people, developers, and advertisers to connect and share on our platform.”
Zuckerberg will be honoured during the Press, Cyber and Design Lions awards ceremony on the evening of Wednesday, 23 June, in the Palais des Festivals, Cannes. He will present the Facebook seminar on the same day.
Photo: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO
Article courtesy of Businessandleadership.com
