Adage has an article on online with our favorite show:

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=122300

"For the marketers looking to associate themselves with these shows across platforms (this season they've included Kellogg, Nintendo and Buena Vista), the key is to be one step ahead of the YouTube linkers. "It takes a little bit of foresight and insight to make sure the brand and teams are asking themselves questions and doing some scenario planning," said Art Sindlinger, VP-activation director at Starcom."

Marketers don't have to be one step ahead of Youtube linkers. If they kept pace, that would be good enough. Instead they are quite a bit behind and attach themselves to memes too late to be effective.

I've been in a lot of board rooms this past year and everyone is building the exact same things. Digital strategy in most corporate towers is relegated to one to six people with very little power and small end-of-the-year overage budgets. I watch a lot more campaigns with very low return on investments than success stories. The success stories usually involve people who created a great Internet content to circumvent strategists and marketers, rather than as a result. Ingenuity being born from no budget necessity, content still very much being king.

Kids aren't becoming technologically savvy. Kids ARE savvy. It's the caretaker's habits and anxieties that set the pace for how quickly kids are online and how much they use it. The ratio between how much time Kids spend online vs television is a very temporary one with fear-based barriers melting by the day. That notion should be intuitive, if it's not..you're already ten years behind.

The online bits that are succeeding are the results of people with that very intuitive understanding of what flies online. They are creating the kind of content that they love. They put something on Youtube because they use Youtube. Marketers like networks need to attach themselves to those people and sponsor that content. Press releases and Adage articles can't reverse the truths that it was no marketer or strategist that turned YGG from a TV series to Internet sensation. It was an
Internet sensation first...and from there got the attention of networks and then advertisers. At that point it's like Columbus calling the queen from a Super 8 Motel in Cleveland and saying he discovered the whole works.

It doesn't do anyone any good to twist it any other way. (unless you're a marketing firm along for the ride and hoping to up your consulting rates)