The inaugural YouTube Music Awards honors and inspires creativity. YouTube, Vice Media and visionary director Spike Jonze, set out to turn the awards show format on its head.

The fans were in control: Nominees were based on YouTube data trends, looking at views, shares, comments and subscriptions. Voting was opened to fans around the globe using shares on social media – making the awards public, transparent, and a massive social success.

Then, in a truly live setting, we made 8 original, one-take music videos – presenting awards, and celebrating a global audience of fans who nominated and voted for the final winners

As the vast majority of monthly views, Music is critical to the continued growth of YouTube.

Our objective was to reinforce YouTube’s unique position in music, and strengthen partnerships with major labels and artists, helping to ensure long-term content and viewership targets.

We recognized that music award shows garner significant awareness and impact, but have a largely stale format, with little innovation and fan participation.

By connecting voting to social shares from YouTube to platforms like Google+, Facebook and Twitter by fans worldwide, we found a creative solution that put social interaction and innovation at the core of the awards.

The YTMAs have become the largest YouTube marketing campaign to date, eclipsing previous programs by over 3x in terms of viewership, press and social mentions.

In terms of fan response, we had 3.3M votes, with 5.5M mentions on social media across the world. There were over 2,700 press stories, all reinforcing a media plan which delivered 3.38B media impressions globally.

In terms of viewership, there were 862K views of the live stream, with 37.7M further views of the video-on-demand clips in the following 14 days.