• by Erik Sass , January 22, 2008

New York's outdoor ad hub is getting even more spectacular, thanks to a 60-foot transformer-style monster that's promoting Pepsi during the lead-up to the Super Bowl.

The inflatable display hovered over Manhattan Monday, and today will travel to Phoenix. There, the creature will hover menacingly outside the University of Phoenix stadium.

The futuristic "monster" created by Zoom Media and Marketing is promoting Pepsi's music giveaway on Amazon.com, in conjunction with a number of "sightings" and "attacks" around New York--in other words, mini-giveaways staged by Pepsi around the city over the weekend. Once it departs, there will be a "clean-up" involving more giveaways. Super Bowl fans will also get freebies on Super Sunday.

The Pepsi Super Bowl promotion will give away 3.25 million songs without digital rights management (DRM) protection from 270,000 artists via Amazon MP3, a new service introduced in September 2007.

As part of the promotion, 4 billion specially marked Pepsi packages allow consumers to collect points and redeem them online at Pepsistuff.com for free music. In addition to giant inflatable monsters, Pepsi has signed Justin Timberlake to appear in the campaign.