A story in this week’s Hollywood Reporter announced that Pepsi will launch an original Webisode series sometime this summer promoting its Mountain Dew brand. And “in a twist”, as the report has it, viewers of the videos will be able to choose from diverging plot lines at various points in the story, fashioning a kind of “Choose Your Online Adventure”.

If so, it’s a twisting that another Web video series is also wringing mileage from. Tassimo, a hot beverage system marketed at retail by Kraft Foods, has launched a microsite www.WhoHiredBob.com, about the misadventures of a middle-management goof who spends more time doing less useful work around the office than anyone else.

One of Bob’s abiding concerns is to give his fellow office workers the widest choice of beverages—and thus to score a Tassimo machine for the office kitchen. This leads him to do things like spending the office’s “secret Santa” fund 11 months early to buy a Tassimo system.

At two key plot points in each Webisode, the “Bob” character stops the action and gives the viewer two ways the story can unfold: in the Santa episode, for example, with either charges of financial malfeasance or kudos from his superiors. But Tassimo also uses those plot pauses to offer a $20 rebate on a Tassimo and free coffee samples in exchange for an e-mail address. Entering an e-mail is not required to continue watching the story, of course; but that fact isn’t explicitly mentioned.

“We liked the idea of a Webisode because it offered an entertaining way to introduce consumers to Tassimo,” says Lori Acker, Tassimo’s director of marketing. “It was also appropriate because we have both an online presences and a presence in retail stores like Bed Bath & Beyond and Target.”

The Tassimo brewing system “reads” specially coded disks to figure out what a user is making and then sets the correct water amount, temperature and brewing time for that beverage—coffee, cappuccino, latte tea or hot chocolate. It’s intended primarily for home use, but Acker says the decision to set the Webisodes in an office came about because “the humor comes from people at work sharing what they love.”

Office humor is something everyone can identify with. But in the effort to make the Webisodes funny by putting them in a work setting, is Tassimo running the risk of confusing viewers about its product? “We’re not an office machine, and we make that clear at points in the script of each Webisode,” Acker says. “But it shows the enthusiasm that Bob has for the product that he’s brought it into the office to share with friends.”

Acker says giving viewers choice within each Webisode that affect the plot is one of Tassimo’s favorite elements of the campaign. “Consumers can interact with the video and customize the way it turns out,” she says. “For us, that’s analogous to what Tassimo does, offering automatic brewing of some 40 different beverages. Since we’re all about giving consumers choices, we figured, why not give them a choice in how each episode plays out?”

Right now the WhoHiredBob.com site contains two Webisodes. The campaign, created by Ogilvy Entertainment, is now soliciting stories about viewers’ run-ins with the Bobs in their own workplaces and offering to turn the best of these into future Webisodes. Entrants who submit anecdotes get a $20 rebate and free coffee samples; they also get their stories posted to the Web site, suitably anonymously.

The Webisodes are jointly produced by Ogilvy and Jim Biederman, who collaborated on the “Kids in the Hall” and “Whitest Kids You Know” comedy series. Actors come from New York City’s “Upright Citizens Brigade” improv troupe. The campaign launched in mid-February.

“Creating original, entertaining content gives Tassimo both cultural currency and permission for further conversations with consumers,” Joseph Frydl, director of Ogilvy’s branded content and entertainment group said in a statement at the launch of the first episodes. “Purely interruptive marketing simply cannot accomplish that.”

Acker points out that the brand and the agency are both interested in seeing how much time viewers spend with the episodes. They’re fairly long to begin with—perhaps 15 minutes—and if people watch them multiple times to investigate the divergent plot lines, that could represent a substantial amount of engagement with the Tassimo brand per episode.

“We can monitor how long they stay with it, and whether they stay for the two choices,” she says.” After a bit of monitoring, we’ll be able to tell whether in fact the Webisodes are too long and whether viewers drop off before the end. Or maybe they’re so interested that they stay with it and watch it several times.”