pepsi

How Jeff Gordon fooled the Web (and wasn't even Jeff Gordon)

When the Web gets excited, it can lose its faculties.

These might be critical or merely observational, but the effect can be comical.

Over the last couple of days, millions have been enthralled by a Pepsi Max video which, as they say, went viral.

It purported to show race driver Jeff Gordon putting on a disguise and going to a car dealer to test drive a 2009 Chevy Camaro.

He even put on glasses equipped with a camera. Yes, it made him look even more elegant than anyone wearing Google's future goggles.

Then, claiming to be Mike, he took Steve the car dealer for a ride. … Read more

Fat-blocking Pepsi a slimming soda in Japan

It sounds like a dieter's dream. Drink soda and lose weight. It's junk food with a healthy sheen and it's a real Pepsi product coming out in Japan.

Pepsi Special is special because of an added ingredient: dextrin, the same stuff found in Benefiber. It's a water-soluble fiber supplement that may also have some extracurricular effects with feelings of fullness and a reduction in fat absorption.

According to a study published in Appetite in 2011, soluble fiber dextrin increased participants' sense of satiety and decreased the amount of energy absorbed from the next meal. How that finding translates to a dextrin-charged soda is up for discussion.… Read more

Pepsi mashes up Twitter and music giveaways in marketing

Pepsi is trying something new to connect its brand with would-be customers. It involves music, and it involves Twitter, though how exactly this effort is supposed to get people to drink more soda isn't quite clear.

Starting today, Pepsi will post a video summary of music news on its corporate Twitter page each Wednesday, based on trending music topics on Twitter. It will also offer a free MP3 download from Amazon that relates to the video news summary. To get the song, users will have to send a tweet with a Pepsi hashtag.

Pepsi will also stream video of … Read more

'Star Wars' product rejects: Far, far away from reality

I knew there was something missing from my life. I just didn't know what it was until I came across ToyOtter's latest list of rejected "Star Wars" merchandise ideas on Action Figure Insider.

I'm missing a Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader salt and pepper shaker set, without which my life will never be complete. How did this product not get made?

"Let these legends of the kitchen table be a constant reminder of the battle over good and evil in the galaxy," the concept reads. Each morning there could be an epic battle for the very soul of my scrambled eggs.… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1459: Meat puppets behind the servers (Podcast)

It turns out that no matter how technologically savvy we get in the world, we could always be betrayed by the "meat puppets behind the servers." Thanks for that one, Donald. And human error does appear to be what happened to Amazon, and also the Yankees. DSLReports, on the other hand, just plain got hacked. And it would also appear there's no one equipped to help us with our little data leakage issues, since the FBI's own cyber-security agents admit they're not up to the task. But there's even worse news than that: the white iPhone is 0.2mm thicker than the black one. THE HUMANITY! --Molly

Pepsi vending machines like your social network

Remember "We've got the taste"? I recall back when you'd fish a few coins from your pocket, plunk them in a vending machine, and walk away with your can of fizz.

How quaint that seems now. PepsiCo is introducing interactive vending machines that can send gift drinks to your friends and record messages too.

"Be social" is the slogan of the Social Vending System, a blunt reminder that our friends are commodities.

As seen in the vid below, the networked vending machine has a touch screen displaying brands for sale. It also has a gift function with which you can give drinks to friends by entering their name and mobile phone number; standard texting rates apply and numbers are not stored unless permission is given. The machine can also record a short personalized video message.

Your friend can go to any linked vending machine, enter the code from the text message and receive the gift. Or pass it on to someone else. … Read more

Free phones and farewell

Links from Friday's episode of Loaded:

Apple and Google will testify before Congress next month regarding smartphone privacy

Hulu Plus is coming to Xbox Live

Best Buy is giving away free phones until tomorrow

Research In Motion acquires a calendaring company called Tungle

The Jurassic Park video game will come out this fall on Xbox and PlayStation

Pepsi announces social vending-machines that let you gift sodas to your friends

And that does it for me! Natali Morris for CNET, signing out. Thank you for giving me the privilege of bringing you the news every day for the last 3 … Read more

Instagram coming to soda cans at SXSWi

There's still well over a month to go before South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi), the yearly convergence in Austin, Tex. of tech-industry minds, the start-ups who want to be noticed by them, and the marketers who want to reach them. But like Christmas decorations appearing in stores prior to Halloween, promotional campaigns centered on the party-heavy festival are already kicking off. Really.

With in the past year or two, an increasing number of those campaigns have featured brands that have absolutely nothing to do with digital media, but who see the SXSWi crowd--the sort that likes to boast it … Read more

A waterfall of Pepsi at SXSWi

AUSTIN, Texas--It seems a little bit counterintuitive at first that one of the most prominent brands at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi), an annual gathering of all things digital-media, isn't a tech company in the least: it's PepsiCo, a food and beverage conglomerate originally founded in 1898.

The company, a top-tier sponsor of SXSWi, had set up two large-scale booths in the hallways of the Austin Convention Center, a "Podcast Playground" that hosted various events including its "Speakeasy" video blog series, and the "Refresh Cafe," a set of chill-out couches … Read more

Time for marketing innovation 2.0

For the first time in 23 years, Pepsi has decided to not run any advertisements during the Super Bowl. Instead, the nation’s second-biggest soft drink maker is plowing marketing dollars into its "Pepsi Refresh Project," an online community that lets Pepsi fans list their public service projects, which could range from helping to feed people to teaching children to read. Visitors to the site can vote to determine which projects receive money. The program will pay at least $20 million for projects people create to "refresh" communities. Last year, Pepsi spent $33 million advertising products such as Pepsi, Gatorade, and Cheetos during the Super Bowl, according to TNS Media Intelligence, $15 million of it was on Pepsi alone. Ad time last year for the NFL championship game cost about $3 million for 30 seconds, on average. Pepsi spokeswoman Nicole Bradley said Super Bowl ads don't work with the company's goals next year: "In 2010, each of our beverage brands has a strategy and marketing platform that will be less about a singular event and more about a movement." Pepsi's remarkable decision epitomizes the new paradigms of marketing: Online instead of TV; many-too-many instead of one-too-many; engagement instead of advertising; sharing instead of broadcasting; movements instead of events; communities instead of campaigns.… Read more