Marketing Pilgrim

YouTube has announced the winners of the YouTube Video Awards, which gives bragging rights and fame to the top user-created videos of 2007. It also notes they’ll be invited to an event later this year – without details of what that will entail.

As an aside I think this could be huge and more fun than the Sundance Film Festival. The un-stars could wear ridiculously normal clothes and walk backwards down a white carpet. And rather than glamour and wealth on display it would be authenticity. Also, why not give internet reporters (like Rocketboom’s Joanne Colan) a chance to emcee the event.

But, back to the winners (which are unknowns and will probably be a whole different crop next year rather than the same old crowd) and time to plan a video party to watch them all.

Here are the winners of YouTube’s video awards – and the very creative list of categories (but where is the educational category and a nominee who is a physics professor?):

• music – and the winner is…Chocolate Rain…which got its creator on national television
• sports – The “Balloon Bowl” clip of a guy skateboarding in a bowl full of balloons
• comedy – Neil Cicierega’s video featuring “Harry Potter” hand puppets
• instructional – “How to Solve a Rubik’s Cube (Part One)”
• short film – Ben Shelton’s “My Name is Lisa” — about a young girl whose mother has Alzheimer’s.
• inspirational – a video about a blind painter
• commentary – Michael Buckley of the popular online show “What the Buck?” slammed fellow YouTube celebrity Lonelygirl15.
• creative -Guillaume Reymond’s “Human Tetris”
• politics -”Stop the Clash of Civilizations” video by the global organization avaaz.org
• series – “The Guild,” a comedy about a group of obsessed online gamers
• eyewitness – “Battle at Kruger,” with over 26 million views of “astonishing footage of a baby water buffalo surviving an attack by lions — and a crocodile! — in the African prairie.”
• “adorable” – “Laughing baby”

My favorite is that the commentary video award went to someone making fun of another “YouTube celebrity.” Also, that skateboarding through balloons qualifies as not only a nominee but a winner of the winner in the sports category.

The trophy sounds like fun – with a heavy metal base with a big glass play button on top. If you want to become a YouTube celebrity, start working on your videos for next year. As for me, I’ve got next weekend’s plans stitched up.

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