MTV Opts for Instagram, Vine Videos to Announce VMA Nominees

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Earlier today, MTV unveiled the nominees for the 2013 Video Music Awards' Video of the Year via - What else? - Instagram and Vine videos.

Then, each subsequent hour for a total of eight hours, MTV will post a new Instagram and Vine video highlighting the nominees for additional categories.

MTV says this makes it the first award show to announce nominations via these video platforms.

What's more, the 2013 Video Music Awards will take place August 25 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. And, according to MTV, this 30th anniversary show will hit another milestone as the first major annual awards show to take place in the borough.

MTV tapped stop-motion animator Khoa Phan to create eight original pieces for Instagram and Vine.

"We have a longstanding relationship with Khoa," writes MTV rep Kurt Patat in an email. "His particular brand of visual is golden for platforms like Instagram and Vine...it's beautiful, compelling and highly sharable."

Phan has previously created Vine videos for MTV for National HIV Testing Day to promote ItsYourSexLife.com, as well as to encourage support for Oklahoma tornado victims via www.act.mtv.com.

According to Patat, the Instagram/Vine videos mark the latest effort in MTV's #RoadToTheVMAs campaign, which features the VMA Moonman statuette in iconic locations around New York. So far, the campaign has garnered more than 250,000 likes on Instagram, 16 million impressions on Twitter, 8 million impressions on Facebook and 1 million impressions on Tumblr, he says.

Patat says MTV was the first brand to acquire 1 million followers on Instagram. As of Tuesday, it had 1.4 million.

Since Instagram added video on June 20, MTV has posted several, including a video of Jay-Z and Beyonce dancing, which was liked more than 10,000 times, and a video of Moonman at the Mermaid Parade at Coney Island, which was liked more than 20,000 times.

The 2012 MTV Video Music Awards had 6.1 million viewers.