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Pepsi mashes up Twitter and music giveaways in marketing

The second-largest soda company kicked off a year-long, Twitter-based music marketing campaign. What's it got to do with selling sugar water? Unclear.

Don Reisinger
CNET contributor Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has covered everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Besides his work with CNET, Don's work has been featured in a variety of other publications including PC World and a host of Ziff-Davis publications.
Don Reisinger
Pepsi

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 live concerts, and in some cases, will let its followers make "tweet requests" of the acts on stage. According to the AP, the first concert featuring that interaction will be held in late June. Pepsi so far hasn't named any of the participating artists.

To kick things off, Pepsi's first music news update centered on Katy Perry and her performance for Fleet Week. As of writing, the company hasn't announced which free song it'll make available to followers today.