SoBe is probably the fastest brand in the world of soft drinks considering the fact that its totem animal is a quick lizard. Thanks to its nimble nature, the brand is also the first to unveil an in-tuner animated video ad, part of the brand’s recently launched ‘Try Everything’ campaign, on Pandora internet radio website, targeting young millennial males. The 15-sec pop-up advertisement, featuring a slithering lizard followed by a bikini-clad Kate Upton, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2011 Rookie of the Year, was available to see for just one day, on June 29, and only by guys aged 18-29.

Each year in June, the Côte d’Azur becomes the place with an overwhelming concentration of ‘lions’ (not animals, but beastly amazing advertising pieces) thanks to the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. This year’s event, which was taking place June 19–25, saw “thought-leaders and experts in all forms of communications and creative thinking come together to inspire, debate and entertain” and revealed the best advertising projects from all around the globe.

PepsiCo invited a celebrity chef Ferran Adria to help develop new methods and concepts for creative food innovation. The new initiative follows an existing successful relationship between the two parties which began in 2005 and involved Chef Adria’s advice on PepsiCo Spain’s Alvalle brand of chilled vegetable soups and Lay’s Artesanas 100% olive oil among others.

PepsiCo is about to launch Pepsi NEXT, a totally new reduced-sugar and reduced-calorie variety in its cola range. The soda giant, which has an extensive portfolio of diet drinks (Diet Pepsi, Pepsi One and Pepsi Max to name a few), will offer a new product in July—the company will introduce it only in two test markets, in Iowa and Wisconsin, for the start. The launch of the product, which was heavily discussed in April in mass media without any comments from PepsiCo, was finally announced by Massimo d’Amore, CEO, PepsiCo Beverages America during a presentation at the Beverage Digest Wall Street Smarts conference in New York yesterday, June 13.

PepsiCo’s Quaker Chewy is following in the footsteps of Converse, which has been one of the biggest brands committed to helping emerging music geniuses get a stage where their voices can be heard. While the shoewear brand is primarily targeting bands, the snack brand is launching young music talents competition, running in the USA, and is happy to welcome standalone singers aged 8-14, who can upload videos of them performing one of the four songs selected by the brand to the Quaker Chewy Superstar Search website. The winner of the contest will receive a contract with the industry expert, record a song and get $5,000 in cash—not a bad start for a superstar-to-be.

PepsiCo, one of the biggest global companies committed to drive innovation and support talents, is expanding its program PepsiCo10, launched last summer in the U.S., to Europe. The initiative is aimed at discovering emerging and innovative small media and technology companies, which can introduce small, but very positive changes to the industry working side by side with PepsiCo experts developing projects for the Pepsi-Cola, Walkers Snacks, Tropicana and Quaker brands.

Any big idea, which helps a company flourish and establish intimate ties with consumers and pushes it forward in the industry, has a team of professionals behind. In this review based on the Fast Company’s diverse list of The 100 Most Creative People in Business 2011, we at Popsop celebrate creative geniuses in top international businesses including Apple, Google, Levi’s, Nike, PepsiCo and more who reinvent strategies of their companies and introduce new groundbreaking solutions that change the world in a certain way.

PepsiCo‘s Mountain Dew is celebrating its heritage by relaunching some of its most popular flavours for this summer in the U.S. as part of the Back by Popular DEWmand campaign. The brand is bringing back its three popular varieties—Mountain Dew Pitch Black, Mountain Dew Supernova and Mountain Dew Typhoon,—which are available to purchase for limited time starting May 16, and kicks off online and offline activities to celebrate its whole portfolio of vibrant flavours with support of its fans.

Doritos has initiated another fight between its flavours to see which of them is the ‘strongest’. Building on success of other themed advertising pieces, which included the spots for the Egyptian and U.S. markets as well as the large-scaled ‘The End’ promotion in Canada, where people were encouraged to ‘destroy’ one of the new additions, A (in the white bag) or B (in the black bag), the snack brand has kicked off a similar integrated promotion for Australian consumers at the www.battleoftheflavours.com website. Now, two new Doritos flavours, Hot Mexican Salsa and Thai Sweet Chilli, are placed against one another on the digital spot, and consumers are invited to support their favourite by suggesting the effective battle moves against the competitor.

Cheetos, PepsiCo‘s Frito-Lay’s mischievous and playful snack brand, is on a mission to reward the best of the best when it comes to goofing off. The brand unveiled the Cheetos Billion Minute Break, a first-of-its-kind, internet-wide experience where  American consumers can compete to become the greatest break-taker alive and the winner of the ultimate Cheetos reward—a larger-than-life portrait of themselves made entirely of Cheetos snacks. Every minute spent goofing off online helps consumers earn greater goof-off status and valuable prizes, and helps Cheetos achieve its ultimate goal—a collective one billion minutes of time spent goofing off by its fans.