Ford Shifts into Overdrive with “Focus Rally: America” Campaign

Reality show audiences can often support their favorite contestants by calling in votes. Focus Rally: America is taking audience participation to another level by bringing fans directly into the action by solving puzzles and completing challenges to help their favorite teams and accumulate points for a series of prize drawings. The Ford Motor Company partnered with the creators of The Amazing Race to produce the show, with episodes scheduled to begin February 5th.

The show itself follows six teams of two people as they drive across the country in the new 2012 Ford Focus competing in tasks. Fans can follow their progress in real-time online on a GPS-enabled map, and long- and short-form webisodes will stream on Hulu five times a week for American audiences, with highlights available worldwide on YouTube. Contestants will be asked to draw upon their fans for support throughout the challenges: twenty-three fans will even win a trip for two to participate in the Road Rally Challenges. Six of these live challenge participants will win a 2012 Ford Focus.

Interested in getting started? Head on over to FocusRally.com and register to play. You can start collecting points by inviting friends to join, answering daily trivia questions, and participating in the Road Trip Challenge, a series of fifty online puzzles. Accumulate enough points, and you’ll level up and unlock new privileges and features on the site. Rack up more points than any other player? You’ll win a Ford Focus. An additional Ford Focus will be awarded to a registrant, selected at random. The Road Trip Challenge puzzles are relatively straightforward, requiring you to identify landmarks and cities based on clues like an image or driving directions, but subsequent tasks and challenges are bound to get more complex once the race starts.

For more information, follow the Focus Rally: America Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Correction, 01/27/2011: this article incorrectly stated that Ford would be giving away ten Ford Focuses, with eight going to random followers of the winning team. The contest is for eight Ford Focuses, with cars awarded to six of the twenty-three live event participants. The article was amended to reflect this information.