Yahoo Seeks to Rebrand Itself at Sundance LOS ANGELES - Many a company has tried to burnish its image by basking in the Sundance Film Festival's cultural heat. Will it work for Yahoo? Lately focused more intently on offering higher-quality entertainment - and still struggling to create a more defined consumer identity for itself - the Internet company on Thursday plans to announce a flurry of Sundance-related activities. The centerpiece involves short films: Yahoo will stream 12 shorts from the festival on its recently redesigned video hub (accessible via screen.yahoo.com) starting Jan. 19, the festival's first day. The plans also call for Yahoo to be a pervasive presence at the festival, when 50,000 or so independent film buffs and players from Hollywood descend on Park City, Utah. There will be Yahoo-sponsored panel discussions and a Yahoo-sponsored short film award. Yahoo street teams will be handing out tickets to sold-out screenings. Correspondents from OMG!, Yahoo's popular celebrity news portal, will blanket the resort town, and the company plans a series of guerrilla marketing stunts. One involves a play on how telling a cinematic story is like "spinning a yarn," in which Yahoo plans to "yarn bomb" Park City, according to a spokesman. That involves placing "knitted art" around town and on a Yahoo-themed food truck. "We are leveraging every asset that we have," said Erin McPherson, Yahoo's head of video programming, adding that Sundance will be featured on the company's home page and various branch sites. For Sundance, Yahoo's bustle is a boon. It underscores the festival's continued cachet as a marketing hub. It also bolsters support for short films, which are of crucial importance to Sundance organizers; they are often an overlooked section of the festival but reflect the event's core mission, which is to spotlight new cinematic voices. Directors like Spike Jonze, David O. Russell and Wes Anderson first got noticed through Sundance shorts. Yahoo's streaming of shorts helps Sundance further its goal of spreading its programming to people who cannot afford the trek to a luxury ski resort. "We love that Yahoo is enabling people off the mountain to engage and participate," said Keri Putnam, executive director of the Sundance Institute. Yahoo has an online audience of more than 700 million visitors a month. Robert Redford, Sundance's founder, said he had decided to partner with Yahoo to stream shorts after meeting last year with Ross Levinsohn, the Internet company's executive vice president for the Americas. Mr. Redford said Mr. Levinsohn "certainly knows technology but passionately believes content is the ultimate distinguisher." Still, it is unclear how big an audience Yahoo can generate for the 12 short films, the titles of which will not be disclosed until later this month. Two years ago, YouTube decided to introduce its rental service by streaming full-length Sundance films concurrently with the festival. Viewership was tiny, in part because the selections were obscure. Perhaps reflecting what it has learned about the willingness of art cinema fans to watch films on a computer, YouTube decided not to continue its experiment. YouTube this year downgraded its sponsorship of the festival, moving from a "leadership" level to a "sustaining" level. Sundance would not say how much money is required for each sponsorship threshold. A YouTube spokeswoman declined to comment aside from noting that the company would continue to have a large presence at the festival, holding panels and staging an opening-weekend party. Yahoo's embrace of Sundance is a reversal for the flagging company, which on Wednesday named Scott Thompson, the president of eBay's PayPal, its new chief executive. Yahoo has had almost no festival presence in recent years, leaving rivals like Bing and YouTube to pitch attendees. But Yahoo's latest strategy involves trying to get consumers to think of its site as a home for "premium" entertainment. "The biggest events in our culture drive large audiences, and then we have an opportunity to expose that audience to everything we do on a daily basis," said Ken Fuchs, Yahoo's vice president for sports, games and entertainment. He pointed to Yahoo's recent live streaming from the premiere of "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1" as an example. This strategy, which Mr. Fuchs referred to as "tent poles and anchors," is also intended to bolster Yahoo's appeal with advertisers as it seeks to convert its large online audience into more ad revenue. Bertolli, looking to market a line of soups, will be Yahoo's lead sponsor for its various Sundance initiatives.