• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, March 14, 2011

PepsiCo, one of the first marketers to establish a presence at the South by Southwest Interactive/SXSW conference in Austin, Tex., is marking its third year as a sponsor with a raft of initiatives and promotions.  

A big first is enabling non-attendees to view the events for the first time through live streaming of the event's keynotes and panels on pepsico.com/sxsw and the site of PepsiCo partner Fast Company. The sites also feature content from panel discussions and interviews being "curated" by Fast Company and conducted on the PepsiCo Plugged-In Stage during the event.

"One of our major goals this year was to make the SXSW experience -- 'the Davos of Digital' -- available to more people," Bonin Bough, global director of digital and social media at PepsiCo, tells Marketing Daily.

The branded stage is accompanied by a PepsiCo Playground, where relaxing visitors can -- among other things -- view the raw materials that go into products from Quaker, Tropicana, Gatorade, Frito-Lay and other brands (potatoes, oats, oranges and the like).

 Two of the projects from PepsiCo10, Pepsi's partnership program supporting digital entrepreneurs, are debuting in pilot during SXSW.

One is a Super Shopper digital game from Evil Genius Designs that lets SXSW attendees "shop" for an array of PepsiCo products, post scores to the leaderboard and tweet photos of games to their social networks. (The game underscores PepsiCo's, size, diversity and commitment to tripling the size of its healthier products to $30 billion by 2020.) The second pilot is BreakoutBand, from the company of the same name, which allows fans to create their own beats on site at Pepsi MAX's lot at the show, for a chance to win prizes.

PepsiCo is also using the event to announce the extension of PepsiCo10 to Europe.

The new PepsiCo Women's Inspiration Network (WIN), an interactive channel featuring content for women, will be spotlighted through a partnership with blogger Sloane Berrent to host Digitini, honoring influential women in social media and technology. Interviews with the honorees and attendees will be posted on pepsicowin.com. This is one of a number of expanding PepsiCo efforts and platforms designed to build long-term relationships with the women who are playing critical roles in social media trends, reports Bough.

Other Pepsi MAX-branded efforts include a partnership with Grooveshark providing a stage for up-and-coming music acts to create a participatory concert experience for fans on site and at home, and a Foursquare partnership that rewards users who check in at SXSW venues around Austin with access to a March 14 MAX-sponsored BigBoi concert.

 Efforts for other PepsiCo brands include:

• Brisk's distribution of 4,000 limited edition, SXSW-exclusive cans featuring images crowd-sourced from Brisk fans using the hot photo-sharing app Instagram. Brisk and creative agency Mekanism are also holding a panel discussion on branded entertainment and consumer engagement, using an innovative Brisk campaign as a focal point. Panelists include "Machette" director Robert Rodriguez and actor Danny Trejo; the moderator is Wired magazine's Frank Rose.

• Lipton Natural Iced Tea will introduce a new line of 100%-natural ready-to-drink iced tea flavors, and build awareness through a new music partnership with Pandora.

• Mountain Dew will promote its digital music label Green Label Sound, designed to support emerging musicians by building their fan bases and exposing their music to new audiences, through an SXSW concert featuring label artists. One band featured is The Cool Kids, whose album "When Fish Ride Bicycles" is set to be the first released under Green Label Sound via iTunes this spring.

• SoBe's Lizard Lounge is featuring digital makeovers that let attendees try out looks like mohawks and handlebar moustaches, in addition to offering samples of 15 flavors of the water.